As the old saying goes, “Health is wealth.” The good news is, you don’t really need to buy an expensive medicines or herbs to lower blood pressure, if you’re looking ways to lower it naturally, there’s a perfect remedy right at your fingertips – Yoga. The art of practicing yoga helps you in controlling your general well-being, an individual’s mind, body and soul.

Benefits of Yoga for Hypertensive Individuals

Yoga has been tested and proven as an effective complementary treatment in the management of blood pressure which can greatly help to hypertensive individuals. Practicing yoga might seem simple like just stretching or finding an inner peace, but it can offer more handful health benefits that our mind can imagine.

1. It Promotes Physical Activity

Many yoga poses requires one to bear their body weight, moving and stretching in many new ways. It is eventually one of the best effective forms of exercise for it focuses on strength, flexibility and balance to boost one’s physical well-being. Yoga poses such as, tree pose or balancing in one leg, plank pose or basically supporting yourself with your arms, builds muscular strength and flexibility. The movements necessary for yoga are low impact, allowing yourself to use your muscles and joints without injuring them.

It is no secret that as we age, our bodies change and there will be a decrease in our physical capabilities, that when we spend a lot of time standing or sitting, it will eventually lead to pain and immobility. Yoga can help counteract or reverse these conditions.

2. It Helps Manage Stress

If we look into the benefits of yoga, it promotes not only physical engagements but also mental disciplines to achieve a peaceful mind. Since stress is one of the main culprits of hypertension, yoga fosters mental calmness that will give you a break from the hustle and bustle of any kind of stressors. It introduces meditation techniques, such as focusing and disengaging from your thoughts which will make you relax your mind and that’s very helpful in managing stress and relieving anxiety. Yoga, when performed mindfully with an amount of care and patience, it can help reduce stress-induced type of hypertension.

3. It Improves Circulation

Hypertension is a common disorder of the circulatory system that is why poor circulation is one of its major causes. But one way to improve your body’s circulation is through yoga. Since our body primarily depends on its adequate supply of oxygen through breathing, yoga teaches you how to breathe better which will increase and improve circulation in our organs, spine and glands, delivering blood to circulate and transport nutrients throughout our body. In doing yoga poses, we can immediately feel the relaxation of our body which is a great sign of a good circulation.

4. It Helps Regulate The Digestive System

Generally speaking, our nervous system regulates the body’s involuntary functions such as heart rate, breathing, circulation and digestion. The magic of yoga is that, as we begin moving and stretching, some movements increase peristalsis which is by definition the movement of food through the intestines. Yoga focuses also in the parasympathetic activation which is part of our nervous system that aids in digestion. Yoga poses like twisting the body a little bit or bending applies gentle pressure to the abdomen which is good for it massages our intestines.

5. It Promotes Healthy Sleeping Patterns

Since yoga helps in relieving stress and anxiety, improves body’s circulation and breathing, and triggers our body’s rejuvenating power, therefore it can also help us to have a healthy sleeping patterns. Since stress triggers many different sleep difficulties, yoga is an avenue by which calm mindfulness support sleep. Yoga has been proven to be effective at reducing rumination, which means, people experience less anxious and less mind wandering but more focused attention that can greatly help in relaxation and healthy sleeping patterns.

A balanced life and a healthy body can be obtained by harmonizing body and soul, and practicing yoga can greatly help you with that. This is an inexpensive exercise that can offer lots of handful health benefits.