Does yoga improve mental health? Yoga expert Scott Blossom discusses how yoga improves your mental well-being. Oh yes! I really feel like for me personally, it changed the way I look at everything. Without...
Oh yes! I really feel like for me personally, it changed the way I look at everything. Without yoga, I would probably be an entirely different person and I doubt that I would be as happy. The nice thing about yoga is it's ecumenical in the sense that it provides tools for anybody who has a spiritual path. The Hatha Yoga texts are written in the sense that you could be Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, even paganistic - yoga improves your state of mind and well being regardless. Basically it's very open to anyone who has an interest in improving their health, improving their state of mind. At the same time, if you have a spiritual bent, if you're somebody that has any religious belief, it absolutely will deepen your heartfelt interest in those things. I can probably illustrate it better with a story. I had a good friend who was one of my best friends throughout elementary and high school and had a very strict Christian family. We are still great friends and I remember when I started doing yoga at the end of the high school that his mom was so worried that I was going to go to hell. She actually said it to me straight out. Then ten years later after I have been doing yoga the whole time, I had really changed in my sense of compassion, morality, and ethics and she told me, "You're more of a Christian than any of my kids." At this point, they had gotten into their careers and kind of let the church go. It was the classic story where the parents are more religious than the kids. I attribute it to the fact that I was doing something that kept me moving in a direction of feeling compassion for others and respect and gratitude, which had seeped into my expanding morally, ethically, and spiritually.
For beginners, my advice would be to look back after about six months and ask how much has changed and am I changing the things that I intended to change. If not, then re-evaluate the type of yoga you are doing to see if you might be better suited to another style that fulfills those ends. You can definitely expect self-image transformation because the body starts to change and yoga creates pleasure at a sensual level that doesn't have a sexual connotation.
I have seen a lot of women who have raised children, they are maybe in their late 40s, their kids are going off to college and they have been providing and taking care of the family for the last 20 years and they just don't feel good, they are not in shape, they don't have a good body image. When the kids leave home, then they have some time to dedicate to their own wellness and those have been some of the most incredible cases I have seen of someone becoming really dedicated to yoga and within a year or two, they have an entirely different body, not to mention an entirely different attitude and level of self esteem.
I think the only thing that makes a committed long-term relationship, like marriage, go sour or get stale is when the people stop growing. It's very easy to stop growing when you are busy with the family, taking care of business. I think that ultimately there is a kind of a sexual transformation or revolution that can occur for a middle-aged woman through yoga - she starts looking better and feeling better about herself, her libido is probably going to improve. I have seen couples begin yoga in middle age and it really revitalizes the relationship, not only at the sexual level. The main thing is that they both start to discover a new way of seeing and feeling and the release of energy that comes when you discover a new way to be or a new level of satisfaction and happiness in your body and in your emotional state - it's actually sexy. I think it's actually a turn on for both partners that - Wow! I have got this person that I've known for so long and been married to and committed to... and now look, they are brand new, they're changing. I think that's the longevity in any relationship, the ability to grow.
