Yoga Benefits Stretch Farther Than Flexibility

Studies show that 75 percent of yoga participants who are facing addiction treatment report a reduction in depression and cortisol levels, both key in managing addiction recovery. Yoga uses mental and physical exercises to calm and purify one’s body and soul. By doing yoga, you can help ease the strain of addiction by bringing peace to your mind, balance and awareness to your body, and can even help skin glow.

Ease Your Mind

Addiction can cause your mind to spin and run at speeds that can make your head hurt. Yoga offers a variety of breathing exercises and poses to help ease your tensions and anxieties. To many addicts, being sober equates to mental downtime where they are not mentally occupied or at ease. Yoga improves circulation and lung capacity, it can help work out your organs as well as regulates nervous and endocrine systems. This attacks the core areas that addiction has a grip on. And while addiction also creates an emptiness inside you, yoga can help fill that void. The constant need to be on something that addiction creates is melted away by yoga and can even be replaced by it. While it may seem like more of a physical exercise, yoga’s benefits start in the brain and soul.

Get Your Body Back

The word yoga in itself means “to unite”. Yoga fuses together the fibers of your body, mind, and soul to strengthen the connections within you. When you are addicted or starting to recover, the connection these parts of you have are broken apart. Your body awareness, emotions, and ideas all become numb. With yoga, you can increase your flow and flexibility, while also reducing stress on the body just like meditation does to the mind. This can help lower your heart rate, blood pressure, and reduce cortisol levels in your body to help fight depression and anxiety. With an infinite amount of poses for various issues, dedicating yourself to yoga can have magical effects on your body.

Skin Is What We See First

Skin can often take the brunt of the physical toll when one is dealing with  addiction and in the recovery process. Some of the issues your skin can face are, dry skin and eczema, wrinkles that can greatly advance your perceived age, and acne breakouts are all common. Yoga has the holistic ability to help you work towards eliminating these issues. There are many poses and stretches that promote skin health. Forward bending poses reduce blood pressure and can significantly help your skin glow. Feet up poses can help increase digestive system processes that are key to healthy skin. Shoulder stands increase circulation in the face and can reduce pimples and acne. With all these benefits of yoga, addiction has met its match.

Yoga For You

Taking up yoga can have a great impact on your life and can put you back on track. By growing your mental peace and harmony, increasing the connection between mind, body and soul, and turning skin blemishes into glowing healthy skin yoga has a direct effect on addiction. If you are looking for ways to leave substance abuse behind, yoga can guide you to mental and physical freedom.

If you want to deepen and start with the basics of yoga take a look at our ebook yoga for everyone