The practice of Asana is not just working out the body’s soft tissue; it is also not just stretching and strengthening muscles. Although body exercise do burn fat and build muscles. But Yoga, along with conscious breathing, exercises a complete system of the entire body changing the body from inside out. Based on my own experience of Yoga practice, I found several obvious changes to my body.
1. Maintaining the ideal body weight is easy.
I don’t need to control my diet. I basically eat whatever I want. But as I practice Yoga, my body system will make an automatic adjustment. The taste and hobbies of my diet will gradually unconsciously favor the healthy food. But this process is not the same as conscious diet control.
2. Big improvement of flexibility
After a few years of practice, although I still have a “hard” body, I do feel my body opens up a lot more that it did before Yoga. For example, I couldn’t imagine I manage to do the front split now.
3. Strength and Stamina
One of the most beautiful sides of Asana practice is to use all the muscles of the body. Gym exercise is mostly isolated out to work on a group of partial muscle such as arm to raise dumbbells to practice biceps. But even with the arm, there are many small muscle to activate. The power of Asana allows you to hold the weight of whole body while standing your hands and using your arms to balance the weight of whole body. It needs coordination and activation of the whole body, not just the strength of individual bid muscles. yoga postures also teach us to stay in uncomfortable situations, to find peace and relaxation in the nervous system. This mind controlling is more powerful than muscle stretching.
