Five ways to wellbeing
There are five ways to wellbeing and regular yoga practice can contribute to all of them:
1. Connect with other people - promoting social relationships are great for our wellbeing. By attending a regular yoga class, the student connects with other participants and the teacher. You can enjoy the company of like-minded people. There are numerous opportunities for socialising before the class starts and after it finishes where you can talk to fellow students, have a drink, and catch with people.
2. Be physically active - a physically active lifestyle is connected to a lowered risk of anxiety and depression. There are many types of yoga, some are fast and more physically demanding like Hatha, Vinyasa, and Ashtanga, while others are more relaxed like yin, restorative, and yoga Nidra, but all of them make the student feel good as they physically move their body, stretch the fascia, and then relax in Savasana, leading to the feel-good factor as their bodies get flooded with hormones that activate the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest):
serotonin - mood stabiliser
dopamine - the reward chemical
endorphins - the pain killer
anandamine - the bliss hormone
oxytocin - the love hormone.
3. Take notice (be mindful) - being in the present moment can be challenging in a world full of distractions. Practicing the art of truly being in the here and now is beneficial to our wellbeing, self-awareness, gratitude, and enjoying where we are. Yoga practice requires students' full attention and getting out of the mind and into the body. Moving from one posture to another forces us to pay attention to our body and how it feels. There is no space for mind chatter as we need to concentrate on the precision of the movement, stretching, connection to the breath, and visualisation techniques. There are many elements that require our attention. We have no choice but to embrace the present moment. With practice, mindfulness starts to penetrate other areas of our life and we start making healthier lifestyle choices, we start paying attention to our sleeping patterns and ensure that we get enough sleep each night, and we might adapt our diet to eat less meat or give it up all together with our health and environment in mind, we can become spiritual and feel the deeper meaning of life and feeling that we are part of something greater and explore deeper areas of consciousness which gives us hope.
4. Keep learning - learning is good for our cognitive function, it is helpful in giving us life purpose as we set goals for ourselves. Yoga is a lifelong practice, it is called practice as there is always something new, we can learn, we can work on advancing our postures and meditation techniques, and we can dive into different yoga practices coming from different traditions. The discipline of yoga is 5000 years old, and there is a lot of philosophy underpinning it that one can explore from studying Bhagda Gitta to yoga sutras. There is something for everyone to choose from to keep advancing their practice.
5. Give to others - helping others, acts of kindness make us feel good. Even here yoga can provide us with an opportunity to enhance our wellbeing as there are a lot of classes that ask for a donation to a cause or charity or buy your yogi colleague a cup of tea after the class. The possibilities for enhancing our wellbeing are endless. (*Mind 2021)