Practicing Yoga is beneficial, no matter the time of day. However, since yoga is a union of the mind and body, practicing it at the start of the day can improve productivity and minimize stressful thoughts, making it easier to face the day.
Traditional yogic texts advocate early Morning Yoga is best for the mind. Still, their early morning hours between 4 and 6 am might seem too early for you, but you can move your practice to the early hour that suits you best. But don’t let the morning go to waste; set yourself a decent time for waking up, and take advantage of the calm to take in yoga’s precious rituals and benefits.
Understanding the benefits of yoga in the morning will give you the incentive to provide a refreshing start to your day. Besides reducing stress hormones and boosting productivity, morning yoga has several health benefits, including relieving aches and pains, improving the immune system, weight loss, and improved sleep.
Yoga does not discriminate. Anyone can practice it, whether fit, strong, flexible, or overweight. Starting morning yoga can prolong the benefits of your practice for longer, making it easier for you to face the rest of the day, whether it’s spent behind a desk or rushing around.
Energize Your Day
Chronic fatigue and the dreaded afternoon dip are two problems that affect most people’s productivity.
Most turn to their morning and afternoon cup of coffee to sync their mind and body as they seek the stamina to get through their day. However, did you know that yoga can energize your day by giving you a boost that equals caffeine? Practicing yoga in the morning can boost your energy and positivity, giving you a head start to an energized day that will allow you to stay focused for hours.
Moreover, 10 minutes of yoga gives beginners enough quiet time to gain yoga’s energizing benefits. Increase your time practicing yoga postures to an hour to gain the energy and inner peace you crave.
Traditionally, at sunrise, Surya Namaskar (sun salutations) was the greeting offered to the sun and the onset of a new day. It includes 12 commanding yoga asanas stretching every body part as you increase the movement, allowing you to imitate the brightening of the early-morning light.
Practicing yoga as the sun rises allows you to tap into the world’s natural rhythms while making you aware of your own. So, stop procrastinating and get out of bed to practice morning yoga.
If you’re a beginner, LifeHack suggests you start with these 10 easy poses to kick-start your morning yoga routine.
Boost Your Mood
One of the best benefits of yoga in the morning is its ability to boost your mood. Meditation and exercise in the morning have proven to help increase the production of happy hormones like dopamine and endorphins. These can help promote positive feelings, making you happier and more productive.
Therefore, if you are always short with people or get angry over unnecessary things, it’s time to improve your emotional health since it can affect your mood. Practicing yoga in the morning is a proven way to lose the grouchiness and get happy since it clears the mind of everything it carries from the previous day, allowing you to start fresh.
Increase Flexibility
Moving at the beginning of the day is the best way to ensure your body is physically healthy with more flexibility. Therefore, another of the benefits of yoga in the morning is flexibility.
While resting at night, the body fluid builds up around the muscles, creating the need to stretch when we wake up. However, if you don’t move, the build-up cannot diffuse, leading to stiffness in the body and muscles and other everyday aches in the body.
Starting the morning with yoga asanas helps stretch and loosen up the muscles and joints, helping refresh the blood flow and alleviating any stiffness or common aches and pains.
Improve Focus
A calm mind creates better focus and concentration, and morning yoga can calm your mind. What are the benefits of yoga in the morning to the mind? Yoga requires proper breathing (pranayama), helping with increased oxygen intake and improving mental focus and concentration. Starting the day with morning yoga prepares the brain to work at its maximum efficiency during the rest of the day.
Moreover, following a dedicated morning yoga routine allows you to start your day early, meaning you won’t let you waste any part of it.
Enhance Mind-Body Connection
The ancient Sanskrit word “Yuji” gave us the word yoga. It means to unite or yoke. Yoga is a health discipline from India that provides the critical health benefits of uniting the body and mind.
Recent studies confirm that yoga’s benefits are real since it can decrease cortisol secretion, helping alleviate stress and inflammation. Therefore, yoga is not just a physical workout. As you synchronize movement with breathwork and self-awareness in your morning yoga routine, you will feel your body reconnect with your mind, making it easier to hear your body’s signals. The benefits of yoga in the morning are that it promotes your overall physical and mental well-being.
Reduce Stress Levels
Stress has become our constant companion as we navigate the demands of a modern lifestyle. Morning yoga has two benefits. Firstly, it helps you eliminate the previous day’s stress as you concentrate on your poses and the present.
However, it also has a second benefit. It triggers the relaxation response by activating the parasympathetic nervous system and decreasing cortisol secretion. Besides enhancing your overall mental well-being, you will feel rejuvenated and ready to start your day.
Support Weight Loss
A sound digestive system and the ability to stop craving bad foods are the best ways to lose weight. Unfortunately, stress is one of the biggest culprits that hamper weight loss because it harms your digestive system and increases cravings.
Luckily, the benefits of early morning yoga include supporting weight loss by improving your digestive system, reducing stress, and lessening your cravings later in the day.
Including meditation in your morning yoga routine will relax the mind and manage cortisol production, helping protect your digestive system. For example, add balasana (child’s pose) and savasana (corpse pose) to your routine for instant meditation.
Increase your body’s ability to detoxify by adding twisting positions to your morning yoga routine. These will improve your digestion by detoxifying organs like the intestines, kidneys, and liver for the rest of the day.
Promote Better Sleep
There are no hard-and-fast rules about the best time to practice yoga. However, traditionally, it was practiced early in the morning, the best time to connect the mind and body. In the modern world, it’s fine to practice whatever time suits everyone best, with the recommended times being in the morning or early evening.
A morning yoga routine is advantageous because it promotes better sleep by requiring you to develop a healthier lifestyle. Morning yoga involves planning so that you can fit it into your routine. It requires a balanced evening and morning routine, meaning better sleep since you have given your body the exercise it requires and energized your day.
Therefore, another of the fantastic benefits of yoga in the morning is that it promotes better sleep. Besides requiring a good routine that entails rising early, it also helps you to stay alert and more productive throughout the day. Most people will find that this combination immediately improves their sleep.
Morning yoga promotes better sleep by helping clear your mind and setting your intention for the day through meditation. The poses allow you to loosen your body and remove any stress that could cause conflicts throughout the day. Finally, morning yoga makes all your postures easier since your body does not need to compete with your digestive system.
Final Take
One of the best benefits of yoga in the morning is that it allows you to begin your day with some self-care and follow the enlightening journey of this spiritual hour in the traditional way. Morning yoga has physical and spiritual benefits thanks to meditation, breathing, and asanas.
You tune in with your body during your morning asanas and pranayama, ensuring you live a healthier lifestyle and improve your well-being. Your connectedness with nature and others also grows, ensuring you can better relate to them and control your reactions. Therefore, you can expect to become a better person with less stress and anxiety, always making the most of your day.
Moreover, morning yoga can kick-start your metabolism by improving your digestive system, ensuring weight loss. Finally, it helps your body adjust its circadian rhythm, helping it regulate your sleep. Therefore, you will never wake up feeling sluggish again but ready to face the day ahead.
Perhaps you think you aren’t ready to start a morning yoga routine. Try it for a few days, and you might just be surprised by how much better you feel, turning you into an enthusiast of the habit that gives you a refreshing start to the day.
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