Yoga is a treatment for anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses because of the benefits that come from practicing it. Aside from being a treatment for various mental illnesses, it is also a great alternative to traditional exercises. This article will help you understand how yoga promotes a healthy body image.
Those who have to apply for term life insurance may not even have to use yoga to be healthier. The benefits associated with practicing yoga are limitless, which is why practicing it helps promote a healthy body image.
Through yoga, people learn there is no need for comparison, achievement, or traditional guidelines for physical fitness. Yoga teaches you to cherish experiencing a greater well being and to appreciate yourself as you are.
Body Appreciation with Yoga
Yoga is a practice that allows you to relieve stress and anxiety naturally. Techniques like breathing, meditation, and exercising are soothing enough to trigger the parasympathetic nervous system. This system slows the heart down, which keeps the body’s response to stress at a normal level. Keeping stress down diminishes the presence of anxiety, and that is what usually leads to negative opinions about one’s body.
The fear of judgment because of appearance stems from stress caused by social interactions. Practicing yoga teaches you soothing techniques that decrease stress. This is how people learn to limit the anxiety associated with the fear of judgment.
Yoga can also help you learn to appreciate your body since you will become more fit and even develop a stronger core through yoga. This helps you understand how yoga promotes a healthy body image.
Learn to Celebrate Possibilities
The positions and movements you make during yoga teach you how to appreciate your body’s abilities. Your body is in awkward positions that require you to use a level of strength that you may not have realized was there.
Being challenging and requiring a certain amount of strength means you have to pay attention to your body. However, while focusing on what your body cannot handle, you start to recognize what it can handle.
Through slow-paced movement, you appreciate your body. Also, your obsession for your outer appearance becomes less of a concern. This happens as your attention focuses on your body’s amazing capabilities.
Marriage counseling in Mystic, Connecticut helps couples through yoga therapy. The newfound appreciation of one’s body is part of what makes yoga therapy beneficial with trauma bonding for couples.
The insecure feelings experienced in these relationships can be healed when the other starts focusing on their body’s abilities.
Yoga Shows How to Observe
As mentioned earlier, anxiety revolved around body image generally stems from the fear of judgment. However, that fear is only present because people worry that others are harshly evaluating them the same way they are scrutinizing themselves. Yoga teaches you how to observe without forming opinions.
The difference between observing and judging is whether there is an opinion present. Acknowledging that you have thicker thighs than someone else is observing. But viewing yourself as ugly because you have thicker thighs is creating a negative viewpoint.
Mindful meditation is a practice within the art of yoga, and it focuses on the act of observing. You have to only observe the thought you experience, without any type of outlook, before letting them go.
You may hear a yoga instructor tell you to “Feel your body press against the ground beneath your feet.”
They are telling you to observe how your body is going into the ground. But you are not supposed to form any negative thoughts on it. You are simply to feel it, think about it, accept how it is, and then move onto the next stance.
Taking the time to practice observation skills like this allows you to take it in your life. You can apply it to circumstances where you find yourself hashing unencouraging slants about yourself. In this way, you start to see how yoga promotes a healthy body image.
Anxiety counseling In East Lyme, Ct can help find other ways to stop judging yourself.
Listen to Your Body
Negative thoughts about your body image tend to become overwhelming and over-consuming when you allow them to stir on for too long.
The result of letting negative thoughts overpower you is not being able to listen to your body and when it is signaling to you that something is wrong. This leads to panic attacks or not catching when you are sick before the symptoms of the illness take full effect.
As you learn to perfect your observation skills during yoga, you quiet your negative opinions in your head and can better hear the signals your body sends you.
Beyond quieting your negative thoughts, yoga requires you to pay close attention to your body as you transition from position to position. Routinely focusing on your body while practicing yoga trains you to focus on it daily.
Through listening to your body better, you start to appreciate all that it endures for the sake of your well being. The benefit of appreciating oneself is what makes yoga therapy for adolescents a great treatment for body image dysmorphia.
Counseling in Southeastern Connecticut can recommend yoga therapy for all age groups who battle with keeping a healthy body image.
Yoga Teaches How to Practice Presence
Appreciating, listening, and observing your body requires a lot of patience, and patience requires you to be present at the moment.
Negative thoughts force us to worry about the what-ifs of a situation instead of what is happening in the current moment. Practicing calming routines through yoga can impact you even in times of anxiety or stress such as when securing your home before traveling.
The breathing techniques you practice during yoga poses help you to be patient because it calms you down and minimizes the anxiety you feel over your body image. Within that stillness, you start to recognize that everything you are worried about is not as big as it seems.
When you call on your breath to help you remain patient, you learn to trust that your body will help soothe your mind. Instilling that trust into your body creates a greater appreciation for yourself, leading to a healthy body image.
Imani Francies writes and researches for the life insurance comparison site, TheTruthAboutInsurance.com. She earned a bachelor of arts in film and media and specializes in various forms of media marketing.
