Yoga includes various routines for anything related to mental health, and its benefits are good for a variety of illnesses and diagnoses, such as depression, cancer, bipolar, schizophrenia, Tourette’s syndrome, etc. It also sharpens attention and concentration in a way where your brain can be able to focus with no problem. It’s considered therapeutic. According to the International Journal of Yoga, research studies say that yoga should be considered as an “alternative method to medical therapy in the treatment of stress, anxiety, depression, and other mood disorders” because its results have shown to make improvements of managing well-being, increases of relaxation, improvements of self-confidence, organization, relationships, lowers irritability, and causes people to have a positive outlook on life.

The styles of yoga are hatha (slow-paced) and vinyasa (fast-paced). Whenever you feel like moving slow, you can do hatha yoga, especially if you’re going through depression, grief, heartbreak, stress or low self-esteem. Vinyasa is recommendable for anger management because anger does cause people to feel like moving in a fast pace. Meditation, done after yoga, helps with being able to challenge your negative thoughts and think positive.

Yoga increases flexibility, especially when we use stretch bands and resistance bands for support. Rather than just a simple exercise, yoga is like a dance, like ballet, because they both include flexibility, and every move is done with pointed feet or flexed feet. Their postures and stretches also look similar, such as a tree pose and a passé, dancer’s pose and scorpion stretch, star pose and bras à la ligne (second position arms), etc.

 It also helps minimize misalignments, injuries, and body cramps. Now you might ask, “What if you have a misalignment during yoga practice?” It depends on what pose you were doing when a misalignment occurred. One of the keys of avoiding misalignments are to check your posture and check the way you’re doing the stretch. Or if you feel like improving posture isn’t working, you can try some yoga alternatives, such as PraiseMoves (a Christian alternative to yoga), WholyFit (its Christian alternative to yoga is called Gentle Body Power), Tai Chi (even though it’s a martial arts style), or Barre (a ballet-inspired flexible fitness that includes simple stretching). If you’re a musician or a dancer, yoga, as well as the yoga alternatives, help you improve your performing posture. Misalignments, injuries, and body cramps can also be avoided by getting a professional to create a plan that’s best for your needs.

Yoga is also beneficial for weight loss. Yoga cardio and yogalates (a fusion of yoga and pilates) are the styles of yoga to use for weight loss. Meditation, done after yoga, helps you to be able to stop the junk food cravings and focus on the healthy foods.

Social Benefits

Yoga is more than just an exercise. It’s body language, which plays an important role in communication and speech. It’s beneficial for improving speech sound skills, listening skills, and vocabulary skills. It’s also beneficial as a coping and calming strategy for children and adults with special needs, such as ADHD, developmental delays, and oppositional defiance.

Doing yoga with a partner helps with communication. Relying on technology (like social media) is a result of lacking communication, so using yoga as a form of movement is helpful when the technology is put away. From there, people can critique and give compliments on each other’s performance. If people can give critiques and compliments on each other’s performance in yoga, then they can critique and give compliments each other’s actions when it comes to social problems.

All in all, yoga is a recommendable holistic healing exercise for almost anything. If you’ve never tried any form of movement to cope with your mental health conditions, physical conditions, or social conditions, yoga is worth a try. It may feel scary at first due to doing stretches that are outside of your comfort zone, but afterwards, you will feel healed in your body and mind.