1. Yoga Improves Joint Mobility and Flexibility
Yoga improves joint flexibility and overall body mobility in a safe and gentle manner. A well-devised yoga practice uses all major types of stretching that would be utilized in an exercise or physical therapy setting to enhance flexibility. Yoga improves flexibility by relaxing nerve pathways that resist stretch and by increasing the “stretchiness” of soft tissues.
Yoga incorporates the three types of stretching: static, dynamic, and proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF).
- Static stretching occurs when the target joint-tendon-muscle is held in an elongated position for a period of time. An example would be a forward fold to stretch out the knee joint and hamstring. In yoga, poses can be held for a few seconds or a few minutes. Static stretching is commonly used as a cool-down in other workout strategies, but is found throughout a yoga sequence.
- Dynamic stretching describes moving the joint-tendon-muscle through a comfortable, yet challenging range of motion. An example is any flow series in yoga. Dynamic stretching is frequently utilized to help warm up the body in both yoga and other types of fitness routines.
- Proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF) involves interplay between the target muscle group and the opposing muscle group. For example, to improve hamstring flexibility, the quadriceps are contracted to lengthen the hamstring and stretch out the knee joint, followed by relaxing the quadriceps and contracting the hamstring without changing its length, and finally relaxing the hamstring and bending forward to lengthen it even more. PNF is considered the most effective type of stretching to improve flexibility.
Yoga improves flexibility through three main mechanisms: muscle relaxation, improved soft tissue stretchiness, and increased tolerance to stretching.
- Muscle Relaxation: When the muscle is stretched, it reflexively starts to contract to protect itself from injury. If the stretch lasts for 10 seconds or longer, nerves send signals for the muscle to relax.
- Improved Soft Tissue “Stretchiness”: As the muscle, tendon, and joint are constantly stretched, the resistance generated by the soft tissues decreases, making them more pliable and more willing to elongate.
- Increased Tolerance to Stretching: With repeated exposure to stretching, the nervous system becomes more tolerant of elongation, reducing the internal defenses that resist stretching.
How Yoga Improves Joint Mobility and Flexibility
- Uses all three types of stretching to improve flexibility
- Reduces nerve resistance to stretch
- Makes soft tissues more pliable
2. Yoga Prevents Injury
Unhealthy muscle tension is a significant risk factor for injury, which can initiate, sustain, and perpetuate chronic pain, inflammation, and joint disease. Muscle tension refers to the resting activation of a muscle—the amount of contraction or relaxation during basic activities like sitting, standing, or driving. Excessive tension can cause overuse injuries, while insufficient tension can lead to weakness and atrophy. Both imbalances predispose you to injury.
Yoga helps achieve ideal muscle tension—not too much and not too little. Yoga postures help improve muscle tension awareness, allowing you to consciously manipulate it to better serve your body. Yoga also activates underused muscle groups, making them less prone to injury, while reducing overuse of frequently relied-upon muscles.
How Yoga Prevents Injury
- Improves awareness of muscle tension
- Creates a healthy balance between muscle activation and relaxation
- Promotes soft tissue symmetry
3. Yoga Improves Strength
Yoga improves overall strength through a combination of isometric, concentric, and eccentric contractions. Each of these types of contractions contributes to strength gains and promotes healing of muscles, tendons, and ligaments.
- Isometric contractions occur when a muscle is activated without changing length, commonly seen in standing and balancing poses.
- Concentric contractions occur when a muscle shortens as it contracts, such as during core exercises and balancing poses.
- Eccentric contractions occur when a muscle lengthens while contracting, commonly found in poses like Downward Dog.
Yoga postures stimulate individual muscle fibers to grow, enhance coordination, and boost recruitment of multiple muscle groups. This combination is highly effective for promoting muscle growth. Eccentric contractions are particularly beneficial for enhancing strength, which is great news since they are a major part of most yoga movements.
How Yoga Improves Strength
- Offers a unique combination of muscle contractions that boost strength
- Complex movement patterns promote long-term muscle recruitment and coordination
- Controlled eccentric contractions, common in yoga, are effective triggers of muscle growth
4. Yoga Promotes Soft Tissue Healing
Injury causes the formation of scar tissue, which can be problematic if there is too much or too little. Yoga helps achieve an optimal scar tissue balance, which leads to proper healing and tissue strength. The eccentric contractions common in yoga play a role in realigning disorganized scar tissue into a cohesive structure, promoting stability and decreasing the likelihood of re-injury.
How Yoga Promotes Soft Tissue Healing
- Creates the perfect balance of scar tissue formation
- Eccentric contractions promote muscle and tendon healing
5. Yoga Improves Balance & Stability
Joint stability and balance are complex processes that rely on sensory input, brain analysis, and movement pattern formulation. Chronic pain, injury, and poor muscle function can disrupt these processes. Yoga strengthens all components of the balance pathway—sensory input, brain processing, and movement execution—to enhance stability and reduce the effects of negative factors that sabotage balance.
How Yoga Boosts Joint Stability and Balance
- Optimizes collection of sensory inputs
- Boosts brain processing information
- Enhances movement pattern formulation and execution
- Lessens the effect of negative factors that sabotage balance
6. Yoga Reduces Inflammation & Oxidative Stress
Chronic inflammation and oxidative stress are risk factors for arthritis and other diseases. Yoga reduces these risk factors by enhancing positive emotions, calming the brain’s internal alarm system, balancing the autonomic nervous system, promoting anti-inflammatory hormone production, and reducing local tissue inflammation.
How Yoga Reduces Inflammation and Oxidative Stress
- Promotes positive emotion
- Calms the brain’s internal alarm system
- Boosts anti-inflammatory hormones
- Balances the autonomic nervous system
- Mitigates local joint injury
7. Yoga Reduces Stress and Negative Emotion
Yoga reduces chronic stress and negative emotions through mechanisms like enhancing brain structure, correcting autonomic nervous system imbalances, reducing stress hormone levels, and promoting feelings of pleasure. These changes help improve mood, decrease stress, and promote emotional well-being.
How Yoga Decreases Stress and Negative Emotion
- Changes your brain structure and neural wiring
- Corrects imbalance in the autonomic nervous system
- Indirectly and directly suppresses stress hormones
- Promotes feelings of pleasure
8. Yoga Helps with Weight Management
Yoga supports weight management by increasing physical activity and lean muscle mass, reducing stress, and promoting mindfulness and emotional control. These factors contribute to weight loss and help prevent weight gain.
How Yoga Helps Achieve and Maintain a Healthy Weight
- Increases physical activity and lean muscle mass
- Decreases stress and binge eating
- Improves mindfulness and emotional control
9. Yoga Reduces Pain
Yoga addresses the pain pathway by preventing injury, promoting healing, reducing inflammation, and counteracting pain through positive emotions. It helps modulate pain signals, reduces inflammation, and enhances the body’s natural defenses against pain.
How Yoga Reduces Pain
- Prevents injury and abnormal motion
- Reduces inflammation and oxidative stress
- Counteracts negative emotion pain intensification
- Optimizes the body’s natural defenses against unrestrained pain
