Enhancing Self-Awareness Through Yoga

Self-awareness is that state wherein you become aware of your own individuality, as possessing private thoughts different and separate from other entities. It is often achieved by focusing in a conscious state, self-conscious state to be exact. It builds awareness about one's outlook and disposition, essential information needed in improving your own level of emotional stability.

When talking about self-awareness, there are different aspects to it. It could mean an individual's behavior such that it impacts one's behavior when dealing with others.

Yoga is a practice that enables an individual to attain physical and psychological awareness. To be precise, engaging in yoga and performing all these yoga postures enable one to create awareness of the physical body as being separate from the spiritual body. In fact, it is a common belief in the yogic philosophy that the physical body is only an instrument of your spiritual and mental body.

The use of meditation techniques and complex yoga poses stretches out your body's capacity to its fullest.

Awareness of the Physical Body

In a way, the processes and benefits of yoga practice is complex. The yoga postures and asanas utilize your physical body in order to create awareness of it. On the other hand, it has its own mental aspect that caters to achieving an internal experience. This internal experience enables you to find self-awareness using yoga practices.

The quest towards better self-awareness is one of the factors that explain why meditation is so valuable in yoga practice. As the temple of your spiritual self, exploring more of your physical body will enable you to reach a deep internal experience with your spiritual body.

The health and physical benefits of yoga has been widely known. In fact, it is one of the reasons why an increased number of people have opted to practice yoga in the recent years. The benefits of practicing yoga has even managed to produce results comparable to some of the results produced by modern medicinal technologies. And yet, that does not even consider the psychological benefits of yoga just yet.

Below are some of the benefits yoga produces on a physical level:

*Flexibility: Most of the yoga poses you'd have to perform require optimum body control and balance. It also stretches your muscles to the limit, to increase strength and muscle flexibility.

*Improved Breathing Pattern: You do not often pay attention to how you breathe and this is something that yoga gives focus on. The ability to maximize the use of your lungs is beneficial for your entire body, hence it is emphasized during yoga practice.

*Better Muscle Tone: With increased muscle flexibility and balance, you will consequently increase strength of your muscles. This will help produce leaner and more shapely muscles.

*Preventing Pain: Since the yoga postures were all designed to target specific areas of the body and muscle groups, it can also prevent the possibility of developing muscle or bodily pains.

This particular benefit that you can gain from practicing yoga is often achieved with a more extensive yoga technique and an ability to attain the proper state of mind. The adaptation and performance of various yoga poses will serve as gateway towards building an internal relationship with your self.

Attaining self-awareness is essential in recognizing what you need to nourish and improve yourself. This lives by the first two of the eight stages of the yoga practice that disciplines your body and mind to avoid the things that are bad for you, while continuing the things that are beneficial for your mind and body. Self-awareness through yoga will also enable you to create a new perspective about yourself and your body to maximize its potential.

Other Psychological Benefits of Yoga

Emotional and mental stability is one of the fortress to yogic philosophy. Your mind and body always go through together. Hence, whatever you do to your body will have its own set of consequences to the body. This is also the same reason why yoga experts emphasize the need to acquire yoga philosophy as a practiced lifestyle, and more than just an exercise routine, so you can gain a holistic mental improvement. When you transform physically, so will your psychological health.

Self-awareness stands as the most basic and fundamental psychological benefit that yoga can bring an individual. Once you have attained self-awareness, everything else shall follow.

Control is a strong emphasis in yoga. In order to achieve the right level of self-control required in yoga, you need to begin with mastering your breathing patterns. Some experts would suggest that unless you are able to control your breathing pattern, only then can you claim to have control over your mind. On the other hand, self control is necessary to experience the benefits that yoga promise to bring its practitioners.

But attaining control is a lot more difficult than it seems. It requires both brain and body to work together. Or, better yet, you need to merge your conscious and subconscious state to be able to center your focus. Physically, you must control your breathing pattern to maintain a smooth heart rate and provide enough supply of oxygen into your brain and the rest of your body.

Increased Mental Performance

The techniques performed in yoga stimulates the brain in order to focus and attain enough brain control. These exercises in the brain will help develop your brain to make it stronger and more potent.

There are also a few physical components to this that enhance your brain performance. With proper breathing, you can increase circulation and supply more oxygen into your brain. Breathing techniques that utilize one of your nostrils is known to increase brain activity.

Better Focus

Focus is basically synonymous to concentration, which is another vital element in yoga. Unless you know how to focus your thoughts and concentrate, you can never achieve self-awareness. Your ability to focus makes you effective in the most challenging situations. However, you have to constantly aim to improve it so your brain is always quick to react on certain situations.