A Beginner’s Guide to Yoga

There has been a growing interest in practicing yoga in the past few years, and why wouldn’t there be considering all the benefits it offers.

Yoga is the art of combining your heart, mind, body and spirit in a physical activity. There has been a growing interest amongst people in practicing yoga, whether they are seeking a spiritual, peaceful life, or a healthy life. Yoga not only helps its practitioners become physically fit, but also mentally strong.

For those practicing yoga for the first time, it is important to learn correct breathing exercises. This is the base to a good and successful yoga session, as it is used throughout each and every pose you perform. Second, exercise of the joints should also be undertaken to make your body flexible. And third, warm up exercises should be done before starting yoga. All these are key to a good yoga session and will be the building blocks as you do more advances postures in the future.

Once you have properly learnt the basics, your body is ready for different yoga poses. Surya Namaskar is probably one of the most popular yoga poses. It consists of 12 postures that give your body a good cardiovascular workout as well as keep your mind calm and healthy. Furthermore, this posture helps increase the flexibility of backbone and makes the muscles these strong. 

Besides Surya Namaskar, there many other postures -- such as the standing pose, sitting pose, corpse pose and supine pose -- that can be done to make the body strong and flexible. Furthermore, ‘Dhyan ko asan,’ postures such as the sukhasan, siddhasan, padmasan, swastikas and vajrasan for a long time, can also be done. All these poses and postures help you to be mentally and physically healthy.

For those practicing yoga for the first time, it is important to learn correct breathing exercises. This is the base to a good and successful yoga session, as it is used throughout each and every pose you perform.

After you have covered the basic postures, you can move on to more complex and difficult postures. One thing that you should consider while learning yoga for the first time is to practice with a certified yoga instructor. You could also learn yoga by watching a YouTube video, but by doing this, you won’t know whether or not you are doing posture correctly.

There are a lot of benefits of doing yoga, but the benefits differ from individual to individual. If you are a student, you will get the ability to make quick decisions, have self realization, increase your concentration level, and learn to handle stress. If you are in your old age, yoga helps increase your joint flexibility and will make your immune system stronger.

Although everyone can do yoga, there are a few things that you should consider before doing it. If you are practicing it in a cold place then you should also do body warming yoga postures, and if you are in a hot place than you should also do body cooling exercises. Additionally, if you have high blood pressure or heart problems then you should avoid postures that require you to keep your head down and feet up.