Yoga, the ancient form of exercise which is practiced from centuries focuses on improving strength, flexibility, and breathing to boost physical and mental wellbeing. Derived from the Sanskrit word ‘Yuj’ meaning ‘to unite’ symbolising the union of an individual self with the divine consciousness.

 

Yoga originated in India around 5000 years ago but is believed to be present in great Hindu scriptures such as the Gita, the Upanishads, and other Puranas. Hindu mythologies believed that Lord Shiva who symbolises supreme knowledge was the creator of yoga and goddess Parvati who symbolises supreme knowledge was Lord Shiva’s first disciple.

 

The benefits associated with yoga are an increase in physical activity, especially strength, flexibility, and balance. It’s also very beneficial to people with high blood pressure, heart disease, aches, and pains – including lower back pain – depression and stress. It’s very helpful for people with knee osteoarthritis as yoga can reduce pain and mobility problems. There are many different styles of yoga that differ in the area of emphasis it focuses on such as Ashtanga, Iyengar, and Sivananda to name some. Yoga can be practiced by all ages and people of shape and size. It’s found that typically people start doing yoga regularly in their 70s which they regret not starting early.

 

When it comes to living a healthy lifestyle, people usually only consider the physical element of it but just being physically fit and healthy does not lead to good health. It’s important to take into consideration all the four dimensions- physical, spiritual, emotional and mental for overall wellbeing.

 

The physical dimension primarily occurs for example while drinking a glass of water, while love or sadness is more of an emotional dimension. Similarly, prayers are spiritual pursuit and learning is a mental dimension. Although we experience the world in all four dimensions, we fail to give them equal treatment that is needed for living a healthy lifestyle. There is a hierarchy for these dimensions which starts with physical at the bottom, where an individual only focuses on self but as we go up the hierarchy at the top we find spiritual dimension, which is less self-centered and focuses more on god.

 

The spiritual body is your connection to energy. For some, religious belief brings in positive energy on the other side some believe the energy is just a scientific reason in one’s body. There are many ways to view energy and every person has a different perspective towards it. To have a healthy spiritual body and have full access to it, one should always make sure that time is dedicated to meditation wherein you unite the outer and inner thoughts to understand the full potential of your body. It’s important to keep the energy channel open and to do so one should study consciousness, religion, or philosophy, attend a silent retreat to deepen your connection to self and pray. If there is a blockage in the energy flow in your body it will be difficult for the energy and information to travel freely from the spiritual body down through the mental, emotional, and physical bodies. It’s important to keep an open connection to develop our intuition and spirituality as much as we can so that our bodies can build a strong solid physical foundation.

 

Thoughts make up most of your mental body. Your thoughts consist of your beliefs, desires, values, and goals. Childhood is where our values and beliefs are formed and the goals and desire we have direct our mental focus from time to time. This is how our logical, linear minds learn and operate, which makes it so familiar to our self. In today’s world its seen that the mind is the predominant force that disconnects the flow of energy from spiritual into the mental body. This disproportion can keep us stuck in a perpetual state of thinking, strategizing, plotting, and doing, doing, doing. Energy is generally generated through an open spiritual connection which the mental body can effectively utilize to create a balance, helping the mind to make wise choices that unfold more potential for us and everyone else involved. To achieve a healthy mind-body one should set goals, read and learn, crosscheck on the small goals, and eliminate stress by meditation and yoga which brings in a sense of calm to the body.

 

Our emotional body comprises of the experience. Be it our past, the present and the future experience that you will have. Its this aspect of our body that exerts emotions like anger, sadness, fear, hurt, guilt, resentment, jealousy, and shame. Current experience is linked with a similar experience, and we develop a label to identify the emotion. The emotions generated from your experience are stored and categorized in our memory which dictates how one will react to a situation in the future. As energy flows down from the mental body into the emotional body it can have trouble with the experience which acts as a blockage like some fear of something or anger towards someone for something they did which develops a belief that all people are similar and same reaction is generated if someone else does the same thing or the same fear is faced in the future. This blockage in the energy generates stress that trickles down and affects the physical body. That’s the reason why over-stressed people experience physical effects. Research has shown that emotional state has a positive and negative effect on our body. So it’s important to be emotionally happy so that the physical body is healthy and to generate this positive energy it’s important to self-reflect, practice forgives, deepen your connection with others, practice mental and emotional release techniques one of which can be by the means of yoga.

Clean eating and daily exercise is the key to a good healthy body but it’s not the only aspect. A person carrying excessive mental and emotional stress can have negative effects on their body. Health is much more than just the absence of disease. The physical body is our foundation and everything depends on that and for the physical body to be in a good state, all the four dimensions should be in harmony which will guarantee a healthy body. To have a healthy physical body these are some of the thing one can do- move your body (practice strengthening, lengthening, and balancing), prepare fresh, organic meals and pre-plan for healthy away-from-home snacks, get plenty of restful sleep, receive regular massages, spend time in nature, exercise and do yoga.