What are the Benefits of Yoga?

The Yoga system of wellness is a culture that's been used by the yogis in India for 1000s of years. It has roots hidden deep in the past, but its message is addressed no less surely to the people nowadays, living in the ungratified atmosphere of the contemporary world. Yoga lays emphasis on physical and mental balance and brings about a calmness of spirit that's most advantageous to the entire nervous system. It educates the pupil in the fundamental principles of wellness, and produces a genuine placidity of nature that allows for large intensity of activity of both mind and body, when such activity is needed.

The question is whether the Western world requires Yoga and is prepared to attach to it the significance the East attaches. The Westerner must acknowledge that the contemporary world is one of unrest and nervous tension. Does he get along satisfactorily or does he merely 'muddle through'? Lifetime expectancy has certainly risen in the last 100 years, but this hasn't been due to an inherent growth of resistance to disease, merely rather to the growth in medical knowledge. One million weeks of working people's time are lost annually because of nervous disorders alone.

The call for Yoga therapy, which deals so thoroughly with nerves and their consequences, is therefore considered to be very real, for ill-nourished and uncontrolled nerves sap the energy of a country, and impact its physical condition and its intellectual mindset. Yoga isn't preached to teach the Western metropolis inhabitant the Indian rope-trick or any additional abnormal practice (and among these fake ideas must be included the employment of Yoga to bring about indefinite prolongation of lifespan), but to build up his own latent abilities, physical, mental, and spiritual, to their fullest possible extent.

The lifespan of the ordinary individual, and by that I mean the majority, is a biological span that he inherits from his parents and grandparents, but numerous people, by paying insufficient attention to the basic principles of living, literally fail to get the most out of life, and expire before the closing of their genetic life span. Yoga, will demonstrate how the longest lifespan can be achieved.

Yoga builds staying power, not strength, and asks for temperance in eating, drinking of alcoholic beverages, and particularly in smoking, and most importantly calls for a happily balanced state of mind. Statistics reveal that long-lasting folks are those of contented mind, because the mind doesn't grow old with the physical structure if the correct precautions are adopted and if the bloodsupply to the brain is maintained.

This is common knowledge to all doctors, and the Yoga system of rules allows for this and has exercises for keeping the brain provided with blood. There's nothing strange or unnatural in this. In the dim and distant past, when the progenitor of man trotted about employing his hands as supports, very much like apes do, his head was lower than his heart, and gravitational force sent the blood speeding to the brain with comfortable ease, and kept it fit and responsive during the process of evolution. Walking upright, as we do now, gravity doesn't transport this blood to the brain, and the heart pumps up a reduced amount through the carotid arteries.