Here are the Top 5 Major Benefits of Yoga for Men from Man Body Spirit

Flexibility & Mobility Dynamic movements and stretches in yoga help the body become more flexible and mobile – creating far-reaching benefits for whatever other physical activity you might want to be doing. It’s why there’s a long-standing relationship between martial arts and yoga, and why everyone from professional footballers, basketball players and Olympic athletes, to soldiers on tour are increasingly factoring yoga into their lifestyle. All Over Body Strength & Conditioning Styles like Vinyasa will strengthen your body all over, can leave you dripping with sweat and feeling the positive effects for days. Maintain regular practice for even just a few weeks and you’ll see for yourself how the repetitive movements will lengthen your muscles and tone your physique. Focus & Full-Body Awareness Yoga really encourages you to place your full attention on every movement, giving you a greater appreciation of every muscle and joint in your body. You’ll learn to understand how your whole magnificent machine works in unison, and begin to realise the importance of looking after often overlooked but critical muscles like those in your feet and neck. Therefore, reducing the risk of imbalances, aches, pains and joint trouble in later life. Correct Years of Body Imbalance & Prevent Injuries Yoga is your passport to addressing your imbalances, and leading you to feeling human again through head-to-toe attention and restorative movements like inversions. Reduce Stress Yoga has been found to increase your body’s ability to respond to stress more effectively, by reducing heart rate, blood pressure, and easing respiration in stressful situations that typically increase these responses.

Work harder, push more, stay determined and keep busy! Do that and you’re guaranteed to climb the corporate ladder, beat personal bests in the gym and be the envy of your peers, right? But does that kind of approach really bring contentment to anyone’s lives, or are we surrounded by exhausted, worn out people who aren’t quite as happy as their flash car and social media feeds might suggest? There’s no doubt that goals, gains and grit are hugely important things on your journey through life, but for truly sustainable mental and physical success, I’d argue that finding balance is key and often overlooked. Winning & Succeeding | When I first started practicing yoga, I was a boxing, marathon runner who wanted to win, and heading into the hot yoga studio for the first few months I fully intended to win. But in class number one the rules weren’t that obvious to me… how could I win? Is it who takes the least sips of water and keeps the most layers on despite the 40 degree heat? The person who gets their legs the highest or can handstand for longest? Maybe the person that produces the biggest pool of sweat around their mat. After longer than ideal, I began to submit to the idea that there was no concept of ‘objective success’ in yoga. Refreshingly, for one of the first times in my life, there was nobody to compete with and nobody to impress. It was just me having a physical practice in my own body, where there would be stretching, there would be strengthening, but there would also be a whole load more.

The Wandering Mind | All of us are hyper-connected, over-stimulated and have acquired a deficiency in attention. In a world of busy-ness our minds have become accustomed to being anywhere except for the present moment; fantasising about the future and ruminating about the past. We seem to have lost the remote for the control that will allow us to press pause on the movie inside our head. But perhaps that’s where yoga kicks in. In a yoga class, though there’s lots of physical benefits as a byproduct, you’re really using the body as a vehicle for self-inquiry. It’s a chance to arrive at and observe the simplicity of being in your breathing body in that very moment. When your mind inevitably wanders, you can observe that without judgment and practice coming back to ‘now’; I like to teach coming back to the start of the next inhale. If you can do this on the mat, eventually you’re more equipped to do it off the mat too, despite any distractions.

Some dancers will focus their lives on opening joints to a huge range of motion, without even considering stabilising their most flexible areas.Yoga can offer this physical antidote to what you do most with your body; it not only actually helped my recovery from boxing sessions, but actually increased my performance. Physically, my view is that a yoga asana (pose) practice has never been about just flexibility; it’s about finding strength where you are very open, and openness where you are very tight. Knowing Yourself & Killing The Ego | Undoubtably, my emotions used to be more turbulent; I’d get drawn in to the highs of life and spend an unnecessary amount of time wallowing in the lows. Ego would thrive and there would be plenty of inner critic rearing its head. Through a yoga and meditation practice, thanks to a lack of focus on winning you can start to tap in to your internal narrative and start to check-up on and really observe the workings of your mind. When does your ego start to take over and you begin to get frustrated by the pose you can’t do? When do you start to get envious or judgmental of the other people in the room? How much do you hold on to emotions as they arise? Yes, over more than a decade practising yoga I’ve got more control of my body and can make some impressive looking shapes, but my biggest takeaway has been the real effects. I’m calmer, less reactive, feel more grounded, ride the waves of life easier and take far more time to appreciate what I have, rather that crave for what I want. Of course, I still swear, have insecurities and get angry when someone stands on the wrong wide of the escalator… But there is more balance. Yoga has been my antidote to modern life and it can be yours too.

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