Mental issues such as depression and anxiety are now becoming the most common mental illnesses all over the world and are considered to be serious conditions. These conditions can affect your mood, your feelings, our thinking and behaviour. These conditions can be occasional, but they can also be long-lasting. They can affect your relation to others as well as your whole life.
That is why, nowadays, there are mind-body practices that are continually promoted to help address these mental conditions. Examples are st peters yoga and meditation. Yoga is a physical practice where you use your breathing and make certain physical postures to enhance your emotional and physical well being. Meditation, on the other hand, involves no exercises or physical movement. It is the practice of sitting over a specific place and just focus on your thoughts. Although these practices are widely apart, there is no doubt that they are the same in terms of providing mental, physical and emotional benefits to your body.
Let’s take a look at their similarities.
Help reduce stress
Both of these practices help you reduce stress. Most of the time, stress and anxiety get the best of you. Nowadays, life can get busier, and you are bombarded with lots of responsibilities. In this day and age, it’s easy and normal to feel anxious and stressed out. Do you know what an easy way to fight it off is? That’s where yoga and mediation come in.
Both practices can help you manage your stress and anxiety, whether you are experiencing it for only a short period of time, or you constantly feel it. When you are stressed out or anxious, what happens is you feel a rush of adrenaline into your body. As a result, you get to poor decision making because of fo the though that the stress is invoking in your mind. If you want to get the most of your life, then you have to learn how to calm down.
Once you learn yoga or mediation, you’ll be able to start your day feeling relaxed. There may be unforeseen events, but it will be hard for you to be stress out about those things. Both yoga and mediation can help you practice mindfulness. It means you can help you find peace and clarity despite the crazy moments that can happen in your life. Being calm means, you can fix things in your life without being too affected.
Poor sleep is, most of the time, linked to stress. Once you are stressed out, it’s hard for you to get a goodnight sleep. As a result, you’ll feel irritated and small things can irk you. And once you get sleep problems, it can leave you feeling frustrated all the time which make sleeping harder because you just can’t calm your mind.
Because yoga and mediation promote physical exertion as well as mind relaxation techniques, these practices can help you improve your sleep. And not only that, but it can also help you sleep faster and improve the duration of your sleep. It may be easy for you to fall asleep, but sometimes, the sleep is interrupted because the mind is still active. But with yoga and mediation, you are taught of how to relax and destress. It can help you clear your mind when you sleep, there is nothing to think about, and it will be easier for your mind to wander and sleep well.
Sharpen the mind
According to studies, breathing and attention are neurophysiologically related. The breathing caused practices that are promoted by yoga and mediation are known to help the mind focus, stay alert, react more positively and many more.
Yoga and meditation promote breathing awareness and help you to be attentive and focused. These activities can actually facilitate the connection between your mind and body. This connection act as brain fertiliser, thus enhancing the overall health of the brain resulting in enhanced cognitive capabilities.
Helps improve your mood
Yoga a mediation has a long history when it comes to helping people with their emotional health. It has been proven that these practices have helped people improve their moods as well as make their daily lives better. Until now, both practices are still found to be effective in reducing stress, anxiety, pain, depression and other negative feelings.
Being able to focus can help you increase your concentration level, your mindfulness, your reaction and much more. The practice of yoga and meditation can help you realise oxytocin which is the happy hormones. With increase levels of these hormones, the risk of getting stress, anxiety depression is reduced. In fact, you’ll be able to experience a good mood even after a 10minutes of doing yoga or meditation.
Yes, yoga and mediation are two different practices, but there is no doubt that they are the same when we talk about enhancing not only the mind but as well as the body. Both can help in improving your physical, mental and emotional well being.
If you want to experience the benefits of these practices, then you should think of doing these on a regular basis. In fact, you can combine these two methods. After doing yoga exercises, sit and meditate. If you do this, you’ll effectively improve the connection of your mind and body. Not only that, but you’ll also experience an improvement in your fitness and wellness. Overall, you’ll have an improved lifestyle and well being.