How Yoga And Meditation Can Reduce Your Stressful Life.

Published April 11th, 2009

Yoga and meditation are topics some people feel are for all those trendy folks and people interested in eastern philosophy. Actually Yoga and Meditation teach us stress reduction and are the perfect old solution to a very real modern problem, STRESS.
In this century, stress has become a huge problem. Stress has a very real and serious negative effect on your health. It costs the medical system millions and millions of dollars every month.

As our world becomes smaller and communication faster, we need to keep up, and deliver results at a much faster pace. That combined with a global population closing in on 7 billion people, the competition to keep our jobs and our lives safe can cause many people to break under the strain. So what do people do? What is the fix for this problem? Drugs, caffeine, all night working at home to keep up, are what some people end up turning too. However this lack of sleep and artificial boosts of energy and addictive substances may benefit our jobs temporarily, they leave a very lasting negative effect on our health.

To solve this problem we can turn to Yoga and meditation, which has been around for at least 5000 years that we know of. In distant history it was primarily used for spiritual development, which is why I believe our secular world sometimes has a hard time embracing it. However today it is an accepted form of treatment for many psychological problems. As well as even aspects of it being used to enhance sport performance and improve memory.

So how does this old remedy work? In terms of yoga, it is a combination of several things: First physical activity itself has been shown to lower stress levels in people, and a good yoga workout can get you to about 65% of your maximum heart rate for a prolonged period of time, usually about an hour’s worth in a 1 ½ hour class. For me it is a way to channel the stress into what I am doing, to burn it off. However this also creates a secondary benefit, you gain better physical health, and research has shown people who have better physical fitness are more resilient to stress then those with poor physical fitness. So it helps you when you do it, and then helps you from the results of it, you win in two ways, just off this first benefit.

Second is that many of the yoga poses twist the body and place it in positions you would not traditionally be in on a daily basis. The benefit to you is that some poses increase blood flow and circulation to areas of the body that do not always get enough. Also it stimulated then nervous system and loosens muscles. Both of these things make us feel at peace, and undo the effects that stress has on the body.