TRANSFORM & LIVE A YOGIC LIFESTYLE: HERE’S HOW

For ages, the yogic lifestyle is known to be the key to an abundant, healthy, and happy life! No, you don’t have to become a yogi. A yogic lifestyle might be the answer if you wish to take your life to the next level and have better clarity and balanced relationships at home and work!

Yoga is well known for its poses and postures, but they are not the only restricted focus of yoga for thousands of years. The strategic goal of living a yogic lifestyle is to expand spiritual energy using breathing exercises and mental stress.

A yogic lifestyle brings positivity, balance, health and happiness into your life [1]. Also, living a yogic lifestyle has proven to be more beneficial now than ever before!

Yogic Lifestyle: In Detail

The term yoga means creating a union. The concept is based on the belief that our lives are dynamic and energetic combinations of body, mind, and soul. Therefore, one must make lifestyle choices that promote inner peace or Sattva.

Sattva in Sanskrit means harmony, purity, and balance. The physical asanas (postures) lead to a challenge to create balance, strength, and flexibility. The intention is to carry these principles in day-to-day life. Over time, a person becomes more resilient to face obstacles and can overcome many inevitable challenges.

Moreover, a yogic lifestyle will allow you to maintain a healthy body, a focused mind, and a compassionate heart [2,3]. Yoga nurtures a connection to your higher self and, therefore, encourages you to pursue truth, love, and spiritual knowledge.

Tips to Live a Yogic Lifestyle Starting Now!

Find the Right Type of Yoga You Enjoy

Practice yoga regularly, enjoy it and include it in your lifestyle. There are several styles of yoga to choose from. Anusara, Hatha Yoga, Vinyasa, Bikram Yoga, Restorative Yoga, Kundalini Yoga, and Ashtanga, to name a few. Each of these focuses on different breathing, meditation, and posture elements. Choose the style you are comfortable with, and get inspired to practice!

Wake Up and Stretch

Want to see your best? Wake up every morning and stretch. Studies claim that nothing is better than lengthening your tight muscles to relieve the stiffness in your body after a night’s sleep [4]. One key component to focus on while stretching is the breath. Pay attention to your breath; inhale and exhale deep to get relieved of stress and experience an excellent calming effect. Other beneficial effects of getting a morning stretch are boosted blood flow to muscles and brain, more energy, better flexibility, lower stress, faster recovery from injury, etc.

Make Natural, Healthy Food Choices                

We become what we eat! One thing the yogic lifestyle will teach you is to fall in love with healthy, nourishing, and unprocessed foods. Yogis have been preaching to incorporate natural foods into their daily diet. This is a beautiful way to practice mindful eating, which boosts your antioxidant intake simultaneously [5]. You can start by changing to edible and cold-pressed oils like coconut oil, consuming fibre, protein and omega-3 fatty acids through chia or flax seeds, add berries, fruits and green vegetables to your diet. The yogic lifestyle is all about staying close to nature!

Consider a Sattvic (plant-based) Diet

While you make food choices, you need to be mindful about eating a plant-based or sattvic diet. Prepare it using fresh and seasonal food and stick to homemade food. Sattvic foods include everything that is minimally processed, in season and is locally-grown. This includes ripe fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, legumes, and whole grains. Yoga and Ayurveda believe [6] that pure food brings inner peace and inspires spiritual growth. Yogic lifestyle and sattvic living increase peace and harmony and bring health and wellness to the much-required balance.

Meditate

Meditation is a cultivated path to a healthy, yogic lifestyle. Research shows [7] that people who meditate regularly have better-preserved brains. It also reduces age-related brain degeneration and improves cognitive functions. Meditation can yield tons of other benefits like increasing a sense of well-being and generating kindness by increasing compassion & empathy. It also improves focus, boosts creativity, reduces stress & anxiety, helps fight addiction, promotes emotional health, and enhances self-awareness.

Mindful Breathing

A typical type of self-care is when you exhale longer than you inhale, the body immediately receives a command to relax. This results in a slower heart rate, lowered blood pressure and let you come out of the fight or flight response mode [8, 9]. The yogic lifestyle includes pranayama, which focuses on breathing to allow you to enjoy a greater sense of peace and calmness. Breathing is the key to a yogic lifestyle. It is an automatic and instinctual function that is under our complete control! Simply retract to deep breathing if you feel stressed out, overwhelmed, or sense anxiety taking over. This is the best way to bring you back to the centre. For instance, kundalini yoga focuses on controlling breath to harness inner energy.

Show Kindness and Compassion

Living a yogic lifestyle means being kind to all creatures. This principle comes from the Ashtanga tradition, “eight-limbed yoga”. It is a system outlined in the yoga sutras by the ancient sage Patanjali. The first limb is the Yamas (the restraints yogis adhere to): ahimsa, non-violence or harmlessness. The underlying theory is not to harm any creature. Compassion, humility, kindness, and honesty are a few virtues that the yogic lifestyle will instil in a person. [10, 11, 12]

Ending Note:

Yoga is a journey back to self. At the core, the physical aspect of yoga (asana) aims to use the asanas (poses), techniques, and sequences to release the toxins and harmful elements for the spiritual life. Living a yogic lifestyle breaks free from all the negativity, egoic-based thought patterns. Silencing the repetitive voice in your subconscious the head can be relaxing. This is a wonderful and freeing aspect of living a yogic life! Read more about the Chakra alignment and how a disbalance can impact various spheres of your life! The yogic lifestyle is all about controlling and empowering the mind. It is a proven fact that by controlling the mind, one can happily live in sync with a balanced body.

Why wait for more? Start your journey towards a yogic lifestyle today!

today!

References and Sources:

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3193654/
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3995122/
3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3652205/
4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3975999/
5. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5556586/
6. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4815005/
7. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6312586/
8. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5455070/
9. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137615/
10. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5405806/
11. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2790748/
12. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6521757/