What kind of person are you? Are you a morning person who loves rising early and listening to the birds chirping, the sun rising? The benefits of yoga in the morning far outweigh posing and stretching at any other time of the day. Even Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage is into Yoga, apparently.
Here are four reasons why early morning yoga can change your whole perspective on life, and make you feel like a whole new person.
1. Start Your Day Right
Early morning yoga not only means that we get up early, but also that we are active first thing in the morning. That can lead to us feeling refreshed and ready to attack whatever problems are thrown at us.
In a world where we are increasingly expected to manage our own workloads and our own time, it’s important to have a great start to the day. Yoga can help us sharpen our senses and prepare for a great working day.
Better Sleeping Patterns
Yoga is a form of exercise which can help us develop better sleeping patterns, so you feel refreshed and energized in the morning. You are also more in touch with yourself, so you may find yourself much more able to sleep at night without worrying. Then you will therefore naturally find it easier to rise in the morning.
This is also the reason yoga is recommend as a cure for jet lag.
2. A Healthy Body
Getting healthy can be a challenge. But rather than simply hitting the gym on your own, which can be lonely, you can practice yoga at a studio. Having the support of your friends can help get you into the mindset of taking care of your body.
Your friends might message you if you are not at yoga one day, which might encourage you to ensure you attend regularly.
Yoga also exercises your whole body rather than one or two specific parts; for example, you’re mostly just working out your legs and heart when you go running.
The internet also now opens up the possibility of online yoga classes. So if you don’t like working out with people, you can still reap the benefits of early morning yoga.
3. Better For Your Mental Health
Until recently our mental health has often been overlooked or discounted in discussions about our well-being.
But the increasing reliance on technology in our jobs and social media in our personal lives has lead to long periods in front of the computer screen. Concern about the resulting increase in anxiety has led to greater social awareness of some of the other problems that we face.
Yoga is a great way of allowing us to get away from the screen before we start work. By exercising our bodies we are also exercising our minds, awakening our senses and allowing us to work more productively.
Having started the day with yoga also helps us switch off from our work at the end of the day. If work is the first thing we do when we leave the house and the last thing before we go to bed, then it can feel as if work is our entire life. This can make us feel very lonely.
On the other hand, if yoga is the first thing you do in the morning, that helps make work just one aspect of your life. This makes for better overall mental health. Attending yoga classes in person can also be a great cure for loneliness, and a positive way of reconnecting with the world and people around us.
4. Breathe Better
Yoga helps with breathing. By practicing it every day, or a few times a week, we can develop better breathing habits that carry over into our everyday lives.
By learning how to breathe and to reflect on our lives, we can take five and stop ourselves from getting overly emotional when there is no real need. That’s one of the ways yoga helps reduce stress.
5. Kick the Habit
Most people use coffee or sugary drinks to wake themselves up in the morning. While it’s tempting to visit big chains like Starbucks on the way to work, your favorite coffee-based drinks only give you a temporary burst of energy. And once that’s over you can feel burned out.
Yoga can be a good way of boosting mental and physical strength in the morning without having to rely on highs like coffee and sugar. Yoga wakes you up slowly and builds your energy levels over a period of time.
Early Morning Yoga Can Brighten Up Your Life
By doing yoga early in the morning you start a routine in your life that makes you feel better and stronger.
Although it might seem daunting to go to bed earlier and get up earlier every day, the actual time of day when you get up or go to bed doesn’t have an effect on your energy levels. So getting up earlier in the morning isn’t necessarily hard on your body, as long as you get enough sleep.
Yoga is an activity that can be done with friends, which helps motivate you to exercise. Much more so than going to the gym on your own.
The health benefits include better mental health throughout the day and a better work-life balance, with your day not beginning or ending with work.
What’s more, yoga can be a chance to change your morning routine to involve less sugar and caffeine, which are both unhealthy.
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