Yoga: Tap Into the Many Health Benefits

Understanding yoga: Yoga is a kind of posture and breathing exercise. It brings together physical and mental disciplines to achieve peace of body and mind, helping you relax and manage stress and anxiety. Traditional yoga puts emphasis on behavior, diet and meditation. But if you're just looking for better stress management-and not an entire lifestyle change-yoga can still help. Yoga trainers gradually choose easier to complex activities for practitioners. However, all practitioners do not necessarily need the same kinds of practice.

The health benefits of yoga: The potential health benefits of yoga are numerous and may include:

• Stress reduction

With its quiet, precise movements, yoga draws your focus away from your busy and chaotic day towards calm as you move your body through poses that require balance and concentration.Increased fitness

• Increase fitness

As you learn and refine new poses, you may enjoy improved balance, flexibility, range of motion and strength. And this means you're less likely to injure yourself in other physical endeavours or in your daily activities.

• Management of chronic health conditions Yoga might help in a variety of health conditions, such as cancer, depression, pain, anxiety and insomnia, fatigue and mood shifts. Yoga can also help reduce heart rate and blood pressure.

• Weight loss If you're overweight or have eating disorder, yoga may help you make the healthy lifestyle changes necessary to gain control of your eating and reduce weight.

While you shouldn't expect yoga to cure you or offer you 100 percent relief, it can help some health conditions when combined with standard medical treatment. And if you already enjoy good health, yoga can be an enjoyable supplement to your regular fitness routine.

D. Work in pairs. Discuss these questions. Give your own opinions.

1 How does exercise work on our memory ? 2 What other benefits can you think of from exercise ? 3 What is the most important benefit of exercise to you and why ?

E. Complete the sentences. a. Yoga is a practice of................................................................................. b. Traditional Yoga works through................................................................. c. Yoga is very effective in managing............................................................. d. Through the poses of balance and concentration Yoga.............................................. e. .............................................................................................. results in increased fitness. f. Yoga can reduce or work for............................................................ g. Yoga can control.............................................................................. h. Yoga cannot cure 100 percent, but ...................................................

F. Check (√) the statements about yoga below.

a. Yoga improves fitness.

b. Yoga has little to do with eating habits.

c. It may differ according to practitioners' levels.

d. It helps people shake off all types of physical and mental disorders. e. It works both on body and mind.

f. It helps practitioners undergo similar level of difficulty. g. If you know yoga, you have better control over your real life hazards.

h. It also helps you live longer.