10 reasons to try Yoga

Since having my last baby a year ago I’ve taken up yoga. The gym I joined offers classes 3 times a week and watches my kids while I take them. My original motivation was the scale. Post-baby I wasn’t dropping the weight as I had expected, but was watching the scale creep dangerously close to 200 lbs. That was a boundary I didn’t want to cross for fear of never returning to a normal body weight. Here are 10 unexpected benefits I have personally enjoyed as a result of practicing yoga.

1. Lose weight. Yoga is exercise, pure and simple. You will be mystified by how much you sweat considering there is absolutely no jumping around. There is nothing aerobic about yoga. Yet, you will be dripping in sweat. You build muscle in yoga and muscle eats fat.

2. Mental Rest. Perhaps you can relate to me and my mental habits. If I allow it, my mind will run round and round things that should have happened or things that I don’t think should have happened. Sometimes I’ll rehearse things I should say or do in my relationships. I’ll resolved to do or say something different in the future and will rehearse it over and over in my head. Frankly, this is exhausting. But, pre-yoga I felt like I just couldn’t turn my brain off. I would lay awake for hours at night with this mental tally running around in my head. I could never get any real rest.

3. Mental Focus. Even if I’m not focusing on past or future fictions in my brain, I’m usually trying hard to remember appointments and check things off my responsibility list. If you’re a woman, especially a mom, you know that I have a lot on my mind every second of the day. It’s easy to become overwhelmed. But, it’s hard to focus on what I am actually doing and stay in the moment with the responsibility circus performing tricks in my head all day long. I’ll be working with my daughter on her numbers and be thinking about balancing the household budget. Thisnasty mental habit is not allowing me to enjoy working with my daughter and it’s not getting the budget done any faster. Yoga has really taught me how to tame the circus freaks running around and helped me learn to focus on my present experience.

4. Positive Attitude. One of the things I try to do during my hour-and-a-half yoga classes is speak kindly to myself. You’re supposed to think of nothing. But, I have yet to master this skill. So, instead I have a rule that I am only allowing empowering things about myself to go on in my head during yoga. No self-flagellation or doubt or loathing allowed. Pure forgiveness of me, pure acceptance of me. Pure compliments to my body. It’s really quite nice and this practice has helped improve my self image and self esteem tremendously. I also do a lot of praying and forgiving of others during this quiet time.

5. Insomnia. Do to the fact that my mind is at a gallop most of the time it is difficult for me to turn it off. Especially if I am mad about something or ticked off at someone. So I used to lay awake for hours until I took sleeping pills. Or I would wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to go back to sleep. Which made me frustrated and irritable the next day. Since starting yoga I go to sleep easily and sleep all the way through the night. In turn, I feel better in the mornings and throughout the day.

6. Challenging. I used to want to avoid challenging myself physically. Frankly, I have never, ever exercised in my life. I was simply too lazy and wanted to relax. With yoga classes though I can see improvement and it makes me feel accomplished and empowered about my physical body. Moves that I could barely do for a second – like plank, basically a push-up – left me pathetically exhausted. But, I feel so proud of myself now that I can hang out in plank for a few minutes and can see the improvement I’ve made in my core strength.

7. Strength. Can I just say I have a 25 pound baby? It takes a lot of physical labor to haul that kid around 24 hours a day. Yoga has built my muscles more than I thought possible. My whole body – muscles I never would have worked on in a weight room – is stronger. Turns out I really love being strong. I love feeling capable. I love being able to see definition in my arms and calves. I feel sexier when I look at my muscles than I thought I would.

8. Flexibility and Limberness. I’m only in my 30s and already I’m noticing that I have aches and pains that weren’t there when I was younger. Like my akelis heals are tight and hurt a little unless Istretch them out in the mornings. Downward Facing Dog has really helped this problem. 

9. Back health. For many years I have had chronic back pain. MDs just wanted to prescribe medication that makes me drowsy and loopy all the time. Finally, I found a chiropractor and started spending some money on ergonomic work chairs and mattresses and that helped a lot. Still, I would have a bit of pain and be afraid to do anything to hurt my back. Since yoga I can not tell you how nice it is to have ZERO back pain. Really, I don’t ever think about my back anymore. Because it is strong and I have great support in my core to hold my back up properly.

10. Rest. When I grew up Sunday was the Day of Rest. Rather than take a nap on Sunday afternoons I take an extremely challenging yoga class. No kidding, it is more restful than sleep. It is so peaceful and calm with the lights low and slow flowing movements that I feel like rested jello when I am finished.

Yoga is the single kindest thing I do for myself. I encourage you to try it, you deserve to be kind to yourself.