What Is Yoga for Mind?

Overview

Yoga is a spiritual discipline which focuses on bringing harmony between the human mind and body. Yoga for the mind comprises different yoga postures (or asanas) which helps to improve concentration and increase memory power. With today’s fast paced life, experiencing stress has become a common phenomenon which can affect your overall wellbeing. This can be dealt by practicing yoga regularly as yoga helps to relieve stress and makes you feel calm. It also relaxes and strengthens your brain’s capabilities.

Importance of Yoga for Mental Well-being

Doing yoga is of utmost importance, especially when the mind is not well. Regular practice of yoga, can pull you out of negativity, and bring you back to your true nature - of peace, joy and enthusiasm. With yoga you can attend to the peace within you, and there will be peace everywhere around you. Practicing yoga may improve executive functions, such as reasoning, decision making, memory, learning, reac¬tion time, and accuracy on tests of mental acuity.

Yoga Poses for a Clearer Mind

Here are yoga poses that you can start with to achieve mental clarity and relaxation.

1. Savasana or Corpse Pose

Savanasa is the final resting pose in yoga that comes after all the exhausting poses. You lie down and stay still for a while. While physically it is comfortable, it works your brain and improves your mental clarity by helping you become aware of the sensations of your body and how your thoughts are flowing without clinging to them.

2. Paschimottanasana or Seated Forward Fold

This is a yoga pose that stretches the lower back and the hamstrings. It is a nourishing pose that gives an excellent opportunity to introspect as you turn your gaze away from what’s in front of you to fold forward.

3. Vrikshasana or Tree Pose

To improve your mental clarity, you need to exercise your mental capacity and a great way to do this is through a one-legged balancing pose such as Vrikshasana or Tree Pose. This asana improves your focus as you engage muscles in the standing leg while engaging your core muscles at the same time. Also, the amount of concentration needed to stabilise yourself in this pose only makes your brain stronger.

4. Navasana or Boat Pose

Having a strong core helps you find ease and stability in yoga and one of the asanas that can develop core strength and build mental and physical focus is Navasana or Boat Pose.

5. Sukhasana or Easy Pose

This is a basic and most common posture in yoga for practicing meditation. It helps you sit comfortably so you can concentrate and begin to meditate. It also helps in feeling calm and content.

6. Padmasana or Lotus Pose

This pose is a perfect blend of grounding and energizing asana which calms your mind and increases your attentiveness and awareness. It also helps develop a good posture, opens up your hips while keeping your spine straight, and stretches your ankles and knees.

7. Vajrasana or Diamond Pose

This asana is known to make your body and mind as strong as a diamond. This pose keeps the mind calm and stable, improves blood circulation, and helps reduce back pain. It is also helpful for people suffering from hypertension.

8. Halasana or Plough Pose

This asana helps relieve tension by calming mind and relaxing the body. It increases flexibility, stimulates digestion, and boosts your mood.

Benefits of Yoga for Mind

Here are some of the key benefits of regular practice of yoga:

• Yoga increases peace of mind
• Yoga improves alertness and clarity
• Yoga increases ability to deal stress - both short and long term
• Yoga increases concentration of mind
• Yoga improves self-esteem
• Yoga decreases reliance on drugs
• Yoga provides greater energy and enthusiasm for life
• Yoga improves mood

Conclusion

Yoga makes an excellent alternative or complementary treatment for issues that require medication and/or therapy, as it is natural, accessible for all, and relatively easy to engage in. While all those yoga poses can seem intimidating at first, it’s actually a very approachable form of exercise. With consistent practice, these yoga poses for mental clarity will help you achieve a clearer mind and improved well-being, while increasing spirituality at the same time.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Can yoga help with curing incurable diseases?

Yoga is not a substitute for medicine. It does help reduce stress and strengthen your mind and body to deal with complex health problems. Several people around the world have experienced positive transformation because of yoga.

2. Is performing yoga poses enough to keep you fit?

Performing yoga poses regularly can benefit you in several ways but it is the combination of eating a proper diet, maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and the regularity in practicing yoga poses that keeps you fit.

3. What are the side effects of doing yoga?

There are no side effects of doing yoga if you are performing the poses under the supervision of an expert. The only way yoga affects you is positive.

Source: Health.Harvard, HopkinsMedicine, VeryWellMind, Art of Living, Yoga Baron