Yoga side benefits and bends are great for stretching your mind and body. And fall is a good time to bring back out your mat.
National Yoga Month is in autumn. And that’s the season when I first started attending yoga classes regularly for the first time at 35. It was mostly all women. Rarely did you see a male in class. And when you did, it was an older male (wise fella!).
Yoga wasn’t seen as a physical activity or as a form of mind meditation. It was considered stretching or relaxation class. It was so foreign like this beet cauliflower soup color.
Today, yoga is widespread in the western world and has evolved into mainstream classes. There are male teachers and school-age kids in some classes. And that’s partly due to the yoga side benefits that we now know and I’m sharing below.
…And maybe just the encouragement and inspiration you need.
And, we know yoga is good for overall health at any age. When we work on our physical fitness in a yoga pose, we’re also doing our mind and Universe a world of good. We’ve leaped years into our awareness for our good planet.
We’re more united. And that’s fitting because Yoga means “union.”
…Oh, how far we’ve come…
“Oh, the places you’ll go!” – Dr. Seuss
Evolved Yoga Wellness
Yoga took years to get mass appeal, but the benefits came just in time for our wellness needs. Our evolving culture is a heavy virtual world vs real life. It’s 80/20 for many of us these days, that was once 80/20 real life vs. virtual world.
And, yoga is one way to bridge the divide, and get back to our healthy lives.
Primary yoga benefits are for physical, mental, wellness, and developing mind-body intentions. Evolved poses today are still based on textbook, timeless, and traditional yoga poses usually named after an animal or things in nature.
But today, there seems to be less focus on variation and more on intensity under the categories of Restorative, Vinyasa, and Hatha yoga.
It’s less about inversions, and more about restoring and getting deep. And that makes me happy because that helps to get us back to balance.
What happened to hot yoga?
It was trendy but heat revvs up the heated engines and that’s not good for relaxation and balanced Pitta. Plus the body goes into mild shock, so drinking a sip of water can be momentary trauma. I would hear students in their near inversion poses around me come crashing to the floor sometimes.
So we’ve wised up in our classes as you can actually get hurt. But that’s how we learn what not to do that makes us grow. 🌱
Today the yoga stretches are deeper and more deeply described by instructors who are more knowledgable on the widely adopted subject.
Someday, medical and physical fitness practitioners may be required to take yoga classes to get certified. And that POV would help our longevity and prevention as a whole. We would focus more on building up isolated muscles and joints that protect our aging human bones.
But that’s just my early yoga trend predictions based on 15 years of observation.
Our culture is becoming more science research and healthy knowledgeable on extending life, but that hasn’t exactly caught up in our Western world ways yet.
As we do more yoga, we will gain deeper knowledge that will empower us to stretch the core mind and body to greater depths. We live in times like no other, and nothing is impossible.
Timeless Yoga Side Benefits
And Yoga has always been a personal journey and adjusting to your body. That’s timeless and traditional.
Traditional yoga has always been about building strength, flexibility, and balance at the core.
We still use the same tools: our bodies and a mat. And the same timeless props as when I started: a strap, blocks, a blanket and a bolster.
I like the simplicity. Our bodies are the complicated piece.
And application for our bodies’ needs is where we can make the deepest impact to our personal lives.
You can use blocks for additional development in core and arm muscle strength. You can use two blocks to do dips. Blocks are like human lego blocks. There are unlimited yoga block poses for beginners.
Blocks and yoga are tools for everyday health. And these are 3 evolved yoga side benefits today where you can bridge timeless traditional yoga benefits:
1.Yoga for personal empowerment
Strength can be in Chaturanga as a bicep push up move which is great for men and women to build tone in the biceps.
I did daily push ups and saw no muscle tone gain. But holding a Chaturanga, lowering and rocking back and forth on the mat got me back to feeling arm strong and empowered (while my muscle looked more svelte, in case you’re worried you’ll build Popeye arms that won’t happen for women!). You can also build Chaturanga into your Vinyasa yoga flow.
In building personal strength, yoga can help you feel challenged and renewed. You can feel successful when you reach new heights like in a Crane Pose, or feeling stealthy (strong and wealthy 😉) like when you get closer to the floor in a Lunging Lizard Pose, and you then remove the block and crouch down lower. This reminds me of a crouching tiger pose in the wild. 🐯
And if yoga is new to you, it’s like crunching smaller into a ball to fit in a tight space, but you’re actually doing stretching good to your body that’s unraveling beyond limits. 🧶
You can do this with a simple seated stretch forward to reach your toes. As you try longer, you will stretch further. And as you do it more often you’ll find your flexibility improves.
So yoga empowers you to do better and challenge yourself at your own pace.
You feel accomplished, and gaining confidence with each move and that helps your body and mind. And your strength transcends into your balance poses where you can hold the poses longer, and this slows us down in our needed busy lives.
2. Yoga for disconnecting
Yoga is a great practice to purposefully disconnect from technology attached to our hip. No devices belong on your mat. It’s a no device zone. 😊
A few short years ago, we learned a new way of working: WFH 2020 (or smart work as some countries call it). Today or sometime this week, maybe sit on your yoga mat and meditate on what you gained over the past few years. It’s smart to process what you learned about yourself.
Most of us were and are on our devices just a little too much. And 80/20 was skewed toward digital, especially in 2020. We all had our reasons whether it was social media connection, doing work, or digital escape. Some of us took vacations online. And we took our phones to sleep that never slept.
But when you’re on your yoga mat, you should have the intention to disconnect. Get off the grid. If you attend classes, you leave them in your car or lockers. Because a vibrating phone in a class would be a faux pas. That’s a good reminder to stay disconnected.
That yoga time block is your appointment to connect with yourself, the Universe, and your body-mind. You gain physical health yoga side benefits as you feel and listen to your body’s kinks and tightness. And when you come out, you feel renewed and refreshed.
3. Yoga Therapy for Change In Us So We Can Better Change The World
We go into yoga with an intention to come out with a personal growth change, being taller and wiser. These days with the generation swap in younger teachers than when I started, most of us are familiar with mantras and now being intentional is just part of the yoga practice.
One intention can be we step up to embrace change. We start with ourselves and how we show up, and let that intersect with what gift our world needs from us.
We can learn more about who we are and are becoming, so we can step into our awareness and make life impact sooner. And sometimes that comes out as a transformative identity like as a butterfly from our formative caterpillar years. 🦋
Late bloomers and those who seek personal growth often look forward to the benefits that comes with irreversible change. And with the yoga side benefits that could be an intention.
Diverse Yoga Side Benefits and Moves
When I started out in yoga, the world was so diverse. And these days, it’s less of a melting pot. Everywhere metropolitan you go, we all have our devices.
America used to be so different than our mothership UK. We were worlds apart in culture.
But today, it’s globally aligned in ways such as food.
While I’m waiting on the oven, I’m on my mat.
I’m step hopping or hinging forward. I windmill my arms, and heel-to-toe move across the mat until the timer goes off. ⏲️
And this is something you can do in the short minutes you get a break!
Hatha yoga is a great way to start especially for balanced moves if you’re a beginner. You learn new poses and incorporate the sun and the moon in your morning or sunset yoga.
Namaste Dei
Enjoy your autumn and with climate change, you can can enjoy a cold beet cauliflower soup… and maybe a warm soup too!
Beet Cauliflower Soup
Ingredients
- beets
- cauliflower
- cumin
- turmeric (optional)
Instructions
- Puree beets and cauliflower cooked and soft.
- Add cumin spice.
- Add turmeric (optional).