Practicing Yoga to Stay Present

Practicing yoga can bring many health benefits into your life. It can improve your mood, help you stay present, and relax your body and mind through the simplest of movements. Unlike other forms of exercise, yoga is incredibly accessible and can be learned anywhere you are in the world using little to no equipment. 

Benefits of Practicing Yoga

In addition to being a spiritual, ancient practice, health professionals have researched and found that yoga offers many physical benefits as well. The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health found that yoga can:

• Reduce stress and muscle tension

• Improve your sleep quality

• Relieve chronic pain

• Help heal trauma (trauma-informed yoga)

• Soothe aches and pains

• Improve your posture

• Maintain a healthy weight

Emotionally, yoga can help you learn how to stay present by teaching you to focus on your breathing. It can invite you to practice gratitude and grace during difficult situations. Yoga can also guide you towards spirituality, helping you enrich your life by giving you purpose, strength, and connection. Whether you want to practice for the emotional or physical benefits, yoga can help you find wellness and peace during the chaos of life. 

Yoga and Accessibility

All you need to practice yoga is your body and your breath. While you can practice with a fancy mat and yoga blocks, you can also do it on a flat, hard floor or a simple towel. You can use books instead of blocks. You can pay to learn yoga from a trained teacher or watch free YouTube tutorials at home. 

Ultimately, yoga can be modified to be done anywhere, anytime, by anyone. If you have trouble doing certain poses, there are many changes you can implement into your practice so that you don’t injure yourself. You can do yoga while sitting at your desk during your lunch break or practice breathing exercises before a big date. 

Many types of yoga are very friendly to complete beginners and can be a great way to add exercise into your day. It values listening to your body over pushing yourself to extreme limits, helping you to develop a healthier relationship with your body and exercise. 

Staying Present Through the Breath

Like meditation, yoga helps you focus on breathing. Sometimes, mental health issues can make focusing solely on your breathing difficult and overwhelming. Yoga attaches movement to the breath, giving your body something to do while you clear your mind. Different types of yoga will have their own unique breathing exercises. You can try them out to see which ones work best for you.

Noticing your breathing can help you stay present in the current moment. Instead of worrying about upcoming finals, a job interview, or relationship problems, you can take time out of your day while practicing yoga to be completely present in the moment and let your anxieties and fears fade away – even if it’s just for a few minutes. 

Mindfulness Beyond Yoga

Staying present in the moment can be challenging. With so many thoughts flying through our brains at any point in the day, it can feel impossible to clear your mind and find peace. You might feel that even if you want to meditate or do yoga, you can’t spare the time for it. 

However, making time to practice yoga can help you practice mindfulness. When you get into the habit of mindfulness, it will be easier to take time to meditate and stay present in the moment, even when you are off the mat.

Mindfulness can enrich your life by helping you: 

• Learn easier

• Feel more relaxed

• Reduce anxiety 

• Feel less depressed

• Be more energetic about life, despite challenges that may arise

• Improve your body image and self-esteem

• Have richer relationships

While experiencing mindfulness might be difficult at first, taking small steps to start focusing on your thoughts can become an easy, healthy habit. Take time to notice when your thoughts drift to the past and the future, and practice bringing your awareness back to your breath and the present. Because yoga brings so much attention to the breath itself, practicing yoga can help you get used to focusing on your inhales and exhales more easily. 

Yoga for Beginners

Yoga can be beginner-friendly to people of all ages, exercise levels, and body types. You can research in your area to find local yoga classes taught by compassionate, trained teachers, or you can find virtual tutorials and videos aimed at beginners to help you get started. 

If you have never practiced yoga before, many poses might be difficult or uncomfortable. Listen to your body to ensure that you aren’t pushing yourself too hard and causing injuries. Learn about modifications or more accessible poses to ease into challenging poses over time. Similarly, focusing on your breathing can also be difficult if you haven’t practiced doing it before. Be patient with yourself as you learn to notice your inhales and exhales. With practice, both yoga and mindfulness will get easier. 

Practicing yoga can be an easy way to learn how to stay present in the moment. Practicing different types of yoga can help you focus on your thoughts and breathing, inviting gratitude, relaxation, and peace into your life. Yoga can be beginner-friendly and doesn’t require complicated or expensive equipment to start. Staying present in the moment with yoga can help improve your physical and emotional health, reduce stress, improve sleep quality, and help you feel more excited about life. At SokyaHealth, we focus on wellness that benefits the mind, body, and spirit. Our holistic therapies can help you improve body image issues and overcome feelings of depression and anxiety. We can help you learn how to stay present and connect to your spirituality. Call us at (877) 840-6956 for more information on how SokyaHealth can help you stay present, practice mindfulness, and find peace when you feel overwhelmed.