Five reasons to make a yoga retreat your new year’s resolution

29 Dec Five reasons to make a yoga retreat your new year’s resolution

Christmas is over and it’s a new year just around the corner. It’s the time of the year where we all promise ourselves we’ll lose a bit (a lot!) of weight, eat much more healthily and vow to stop bringing our work home.

If you’re thinking about your new year’s resolutions about now, we have six reasons why you should add attending one of our yoga retreats with digital detox to your list!

1. A yoga retreat will help to boost weight loss

Yoga can help to improve your metabolism; yoga increases your muscle, improves flexibility and boosts energy allowing you to be active throughout the day. In turn this can fire up your metabolism, which has many benefits including (ta DAH) weight loss!

As yoga improves the metabolism it also helps you to lose weight naturally, by building lean muscle it helps to burn calories and fat when you are performing the poses. By taking part in regular yoga sessions you’ll atart to loose weight naturally (just as long as you don’t up your calorie count at the same time..).

2. A yoga retreat could ease your food cravings

Research shows that regular yoga practice strengthens the mind-body connection. Yoga is associated with the awareness of physical and emotional sensations due to the strengthened mind-body connection.

Strengthening the body-mind connection is associated with mindful eating – an awareness of all the physical and emotional sensations associated with eating. This heightened awareness can help you tune into emotions that are involved with certain food cravings. Pranayama (yoga breathing) can also help you to slow down and make better choices when you have those chocolate and carb cravings.

3.Yoga can help your memory

When practicing yoga the asana (poses) can actually sharpen the brain making you more alert. In a study of 133 adults aged 53-96 those adults who practiced yoga for 30 minutes, twice a week for more than a month, found an improvement in their cognitive function.

A big part of yoga is controlling your breathing and focusing the breath maximises oxygen and movement in the blood flow to the brain and the body. The study above saw significant gains in memory performance because of precisely this.

4. A yoga retreat will boost your energy levels

When you first start a regular yoga practice it may feel hard and as if it is using more energy than it creates. However, as you progress the poses become easier and the practice leaves you feeling more refreshed and energised.

Studies show that some yoga poses can increase the hormone cortisol. Having low levels of cortisol can dramatically decrease your energy – so raising cortisol levels is directly linked to increasing energy. Soon you will be bounding out of a class with far more energy than when you went in.

In addition, the practice of pranayama (controlled yoga breathing) means your blood will receive fresh oxygen and this is key to increasing energy. Regular yoga practice, which is something we promote on our yoga retreats combined with digital detox, will leave you feeling more energised allowing you to get more done throughout the day.

5. A yoga retreat will reduce your stress levels

Stress can have a negative impact on our lives, whether it is stress from work or stress from our home life, and we all try as a new year approaches to think about reducing our stress levels. Yoga is proven to reduce stress through a number of different techniques.

Through the practice of controlled yoga breathing we cause our body to relax, deep breathing increases the supply of oxygen to our brain and stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system promotes a state of calm in our body.

Yoga also specifically works to boost feel-good brain chemicals such as GABA, which is one of the chemicals responsible for the feeling of relaxation. An one of our yoga retreats with digital detox you will partake in daily yoga practice and feel less stressed because of this.

At all our yoga retreats with digital detox we encourage daily yoga practice, and by doing yoga daily you will reap all of the benefits that yoga gives.

This year make a yoga retreat your new years resolution, and don’t forget you can practice yoga at home too and experience all the benefits that yoga gives all year round.