Lifestyle arts like Yoga, Pilates, and Martial Arts are becoming more prominent alternatives to your typical weightlifting and cardiovascular training sessions. They are exercise with a purpose, and in some cases, fitness is a byproduct of dedicated training, and not the primary goal. While the benefits that follow are not exclusive to Yoga and are in fact true for many lifestyle arts including Pilates and Martial Arts training, they are indeed what makes Yoga more than just fitness training.

Yoga balances the body. Most sports and fitness exercises focus on one element of movement, muscular contraction. This is what creates big muscles and increased strength. But all movement has two opposing forces, relaxation and contraction. Every movement requires a protagonist muscle to contract, while its contrary antagonist muscle relaxes. Movement for most adults becomes more difficult with age because their body becomes imbalanced due to muscular contraction without the constant practice of relaxation and flexibility.

Range of motion is increased through stretching. The longer the muscle, the less resistance it causes its contrary contracting muscle within a motion. This creates grace and fluidity in motion and it balances the body. Movement in general becomes easier, more natural, and more powerful. And this manifests as inner power, confidence, and patience. This also has the added benefit of improved blood and energy circulation, which helps all around health. Many illnesses can be traced to physical tensions, tweaks and pains that aren’t looked after carefully.

Yoga harmonizes mind, body, and breath. As many may be aware, yoga, just as traditional martial arts, was originally created to strengthen the body for serious meditation and spiritual purposes. The physical was a path to the spiritual. Few sports focus on the coordination of breath with movement, but it is in this essential dynamic that power in movement is created. Energy is stored and released with every breath. High states of consciousness and energy development require mind and body unity and breath-movement harmony.

And the last benefit I’ll mention here, but hardly the last, is the framework yoga can provide for your personal identity. Many people lose themselves with age. They’ve grown apart from things they knew when they were young and they wind up isolated and confused. Yoga is, fundamentally, self discovery and personal development. A true yoga practitioner will never be lost for cause, because all they need in life is right before them. They will find in Yoga, and in themselves, a center which is unmoving. And this center will forever provide meaning and focus in life.

Tom Fazio is a martial arts and fitness instructor based in Shanghai. He contributes to the fitness webzines Yoga Denver, Yoga Shanghai, and Yoga Beijing.

Article Source: ArticleSpan

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