There seems to be a yoga boom happening around the world as the West has finally accepted the practice and allowed it to become entrenched as a mainstream holistic approach to health and well being. Thanks to pop icons like Madonna who have been openly letting the public know that she practices yoga, the masses have caught on that this type of custom that promotes youthfulness and helps stave off the signs of premature aging.
However, how true and how effective is the practice of yoga in the anti-aging battle? Well, at the core of the practice is the promise of being able to transcend the physical body’s limitations, namely its predisposition to premature aging as a result of the stresses and elements brought about from our lifestyle. As you get into the practice of yoga you get to slowly imbibe an entire holistic lifestyle conducive to promoting youthfulness. You begin to eat healthier simply because you notice the difference in your body’s performance as you do the yoga asanas when you eat right.
Aside from encouraging you to eat right, the practice of yoga is a type of physical exercise that promotes optimum levels of oxygen. Any type of aerobic exercise is good for the circulatory system and it also provides the body with much needed oxygen. The difference with usual aerobic exercise and yoga is that in the latter, you need to get into asanas or poses that require you to either contract or expand your body parts and the blood and oxygen are concentrated in areas that are being exercised.
Also, the challenging poses of yoga need a certain amount of concentration. This means that at the same time you are exercising you body, you are also exercising your mind. Proper nutrition, brain exercises and physical exercise all promote better well being and youthfulness which is why the practice of yoga is one of the more popular choices for anti-aging.
Beyond that however, what makes regular yoga practice unique is that the change in lifestyle and the single minded approach to the challenge of poses allows the mind to slowly unfold into believing that it can achieve what seems to be impossible. In this realization can the yoga practitioner eventually achieve the transcendence of the limitations of the body that we have come to expect. This journey of transcendence is what regular yoga practitioners successfully use as an anti-aging tool.