Yoga for Increased Fitness and Other Health Benefits

The multitude of benefits of yoga teacher training—weight-loss, heart disease protection, freedom from stress—are enticing enough, but how do they fare against modern science? Research has revealed the promises the ancient tradition can—and can’t—deliver in a yoga retreat at Bali.

One of the major reasons for yoga’s popularity—is that yoga just makes people feel good. It bumps up levels of the neurotransmitter GABA that lifts mood and suppresses anxiety. Recent research on yoga’s effects on anxiety and depression has found that yoga helps moderate reactions to and perceptions of stress, and also significantly negating depression—especially in women.

Not all yoga teachers training meets minimum standards for aerobic exercise. Sun salutations, one of the more aerobically challenging yoga progressions, gets halfway to the American College of Sports Medicine’s baseline standard for aerobic exercise.

The exact mechanism through which yoga helps still remains to be understood. Multiple studies from around the world that show yoga in a Bali retreat lowers some of the most common risk factors.

The practice of yoga teacher training turns you into a veritable calorie furnace. The lithe appearance of the instructors and regulars at yoga retreat Bali suggest that. But one of the more surprising findings is that yoga actually decreases your metabolism. Yoga may help people lose weight and they do so despite the acute physiological effects of a yoga session.

A 2010 Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine study found that active stretching (where the muscle opposite the one being stretched is contracted), resulted in lasting, improved range of motion. On the other hand, passive stretches actually decrease the range of motion.

People desire strong, flexible muscles, even as most of us have weak, tight muscles. Yoga teacher training helps release muscular tension and start getting stronger.

Yoga slows down the aging process through increasing DNA-protecting telomerase. It also helps older adults deal with some of the most common age-related ailments. The practice has also been shown to be effective therapy for the likes of rheumatoid arthritis and musculoskeletal pain.

Studies are on to confirm the belief that yoga helps build stronger bones. It also helps prevent fractures (often critical in the old) by improving balance and reducing the chance of falling.

Yoga Improves Your Sex Life

Both men and women who regularly practice yoga (who practice for an hour each day) report increased arousal, better orgasm, and more overall satisfaction in general—in part due to increased testosterone.

For example, the Cobra pose improves your testosterone helping you do away with the little blue pills. A Canadian study of yogic breathing techniques found that it benefited increased sexual arousal, even in those with Sexual Arousal Disorder.

It still remains hard for science to quantify some of yoga’s greatest attributes. Yoga’s enduring fascination comes from its capacity to exceed rational or empirical investigation. What yoga retreat Bali deals with cannot be reduced to the biological or psychological. Most of yoga’s truths surely go beyond the truths of science.