To some people, “yoga is that soft and easy body movement exercise meant for women.” And so they’d never associate it to something a man should even consider.
But indeed, why would any man want to give up his series of tough “go-go-go, push-push-push, more-more-more” exercises for yoga? If one of your goals for going to the gym is to lose weight, yoga will help you stick with the best meal to help you hit your goal through discipline.
For most forms of yoga, you don’t get those intense workout sessions. But that absence of those intense weight lifting and other “masculine exercises” in the gym doesn’t make yoga less beneficial to men.
Yoga has many benefits for you as a man. In this article, we’re going to discuss ten benefits you’ll get from yoga and show you reasons why you should consider replacing your regular exercises with yoga the next time you hit the gym.
Just to ensure we’re not making you quit your regular workout for something unproductive, we’ve worked with reputable researchers from an essay writing website. The content here has been thoroughly researched.
But before we get into that, here are some of the things you’d need to kick off with yoga:
- Your yoga mat. Get yours, and don’t hope on what’s available at the gym house.
- A yoga outfit. Shorts that aren’t too tight and shirts not too bogus.
- An open mind. Be prepared to learn from everyone, and ask questions always.
- Yoga instructor. You may even get one over “the internet.” They’ll help you hit results faster.
Let’s get right in:
- Yoga Helps You Handle Stress
Often, women tend to be more in tune with their emotions and are better able to handle daily stressors. Men often ignore signs of stress and rather try to “take it all in.” In return, men come down with high blood pressure, high heart rate, and other stress-related conditions more often.
Stress doesn’t just come with physical changes. You also boil down with more subtle behavioral changes that accompany stress – eating less healthfully, exercising less, and engaging in more high-risk behaviors such as drinking and smoking.
Yoga helps you to create time to sit and be quiet, to gently stretch, and to breathe deeply. Various forms of yoga will help you deal with many negative aspects of stress.
Everyone benefits from yoga, and as a man, you gain more. You’ll get to decompress and de-stress. Yoga meditation time allows you to work out everything going on in your life. And generally, yoga helps men deal with depression.
- Yoga Helps You Build Body Strength and Balance
Yoga is a must-do exercise that builds body muscles and balance.
First, yoga poses will help you improve your balance – literally. Yoga exercises usually consist of poses that involve balancing a single leg and also arm-balancing techniques. Exercises such as headstands and even handstands that helps in building excellent body balance are common in yoga.
Regardless of the time and investment you put into muscle-growing exercises, engaging in yoga will bring a new experience and distinguishable benefits.
Again, yoga time gives your body room to exercise differently due to the unique routines that come with it. General body exercises are usually considered an excellent means to build one’s body structure. However, there always seems to be a certain kind of risk that comes with regular gym-based exercises. It might be beneficial but mildly excruciating.
On the contrary, you could hear someone who switched to yoga give comments like, “Usually my back hurts like crazy, but after practicing yoga that changed. It soothed the pain.” Yoga strengthens the body while giving it flexibility.
- Yoga Helps Improve Your Mobility and Posture
If you’re still a young guy and have no business with stiff and achy joints and muscles, then you shouldn’t have to be complaining about those. Maybe sitting for long and at work may receive credit for those, but repeating the same workout routine often also deserves some credit.
Your lifting routine might just be one vital factor you’re overlooking, especially if you’re not countering your added muscle gains with mobility moves. Spending all those time bulking up your arms, abs, chest, and all those muscles tightness stiffen up your body.
Yoga helps counter the results of sitting in an office chair all day. It also allows you to stretch out your muscles.
- Yoga Helps You Sleep Better
Are you among those who continue to stay up at night even when lying on their bed? Yoga can help both to fall asleep easier and to sleep better.
If you want yoga to help you faster and better, try out yoga poses like legs up the wall, lying butterfly pose, and corpse pose. Focusing on breathing exercises would also help. This research shows that people who practice yoga long enough tend to sleep better.
Are you thinking about how that’s possible? Those physical and mental efforts you put into yoga, though they’re light, could count for that. Your lungs are opened up, you get more air, and you reduce your chances to snore. However, you can’t take away the place of breathing exercises.
And to make it easier for you, setting the right scene and getting into the right frame of mind for sleep will help you.
- Yoga Helps You Increase Productivity
Adding yoga to your workout routine will boost your productivity level. The quiet time you spend alone on your Yoga mat, helps your mind work out how strategies to improve your work. Also, you’d be doing away with any chances of mental burnout.
Those physical yoga exercises give your physical body space and stimulate more energy to tackle your tasks. At the end of your yoga session, you come out better prepared, physically and mentally, to continue with your task.
Taking a look at mindfulness among the US workforce, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says yoga helps reduce productivity issues like burnout.
- Yoga Will Benefit Your Sex Life
Like I’ve noted before, all your yoga stretch and pose helps you become more flexible. Again, you get to understand your body better and get more confident about yourself. Even your anxiety and stress level gets a significant positive impact.
Sum all of these together, and you can already imagine a better sexual experience for yourself even before you start. Yoga can also help increase blood flow to the genital area. This helps in boosting arousal.
Just to double assure you, in 2011, the Journal of Sexual Medicine published their study, which showed men who had practiced yoga for 12 weeks experienced better sexual desire, orgasm, and satisfaction.
- Yoga Helps You Develop a Balanced Body and Mind
Some of the yoga poses and stretches are extremely challenging and push you to your limit. But they also put all your muscles to work, giving you a complete body workout. Unlike weight lifting, which may simply focus on one part of your body, yoga sends every part of you to work.
All the work you put into yoga gets even your digestive systems working excellently. Your body gets the nutrients from the food you eat and leaving you in perfect shape.
Your mind isn’t left out. Even the least challenging yoga poses require concentration and focus. That’s in addition to the time you spend on meditation, plus developing healthier breathing habits. All these add to make you a completely balanced person.
- Yoga Helps You with Other Exercises
Even if you’re not considering completely quitting your current workout routine, you still need yoga. It’ll help you with every other form of exercise.
During yoga, you build your stamina, improve flexibility and develop bigger and stronger muscles. You need all of these for all other gym-related activities.
And because it’s also an exercise that involves every part of your body and improves flexibility, you’d significantly reduce your chances of injuries associated with other forms of workout. You’d gain the “yoga benefits” and improve on other exercises.
- In Yoga, There’s no competition.
In yoga, everyone is focused on themselves, and working to improve their personal growth. Even when you see techniques that are new to you, your focus would be to learn the new technique and not to compete.
You don’t have to bother about who started after you, and how much they’ve developed. Thinking about things like that can build stress.
In a yoga class, everyone is out to help you develop, while you focus on matching your inner goals.
- Yoga Feels Good
Each time you complete your yoga session, you’d feel really good about yourself. That feeling of satisfaction comes from knowing you’ve become a better person overall, and working at your own pace to continue getting better.
You’d no longer feel heavy for certain tasks. You’d improve your productivity even at work and enjoy a healthier relationship with your partner. That feels nice.
Conclusion
Yoga isn’t that light, body stretching exercise that’s better left for women. You need to actively practice yoga as a man.
It doesn’t take so much to start, and you can even practice anywhere – even outside your gym house. Do you have your mat and some determination to practice yoga? That’s all you need. Even if there’s no yoga instructor in your gym, Youtube could be the right place to start.
Do you want to see if everything we’ve said stands? Why not start your yoga today.
Bio:
Charles Normandin writes unique articles, an article contributor for RushEssay. He is a professional in writing unique texts and also speaks three languages at a high level. He is fond of volunteering, drawing, and rock climbing. In his view, days spent helping animals at the shelter make their life better. Meet him on Twitter @Charles60104524
