Every other influencer you see online is telling you: “Yoga this, yoga that,” like it’s some miraculous exercise that will turn the life of your lazy and procrastinating self-upside down. Which more often than not, leaves you wondering … is it really worth the hype? We did the research for you so you don’t have to! Here’s a short list on how yoga benefits your health:

Yoga helps in your bowel movement

As unusual as this may sound, frequent yoga exercises serve as a therapy for your irregular bowel movements. Let’s be honest, starting off the day constipated is not the right way to go. You’d be surprised at how much a healthy digestive system can put your mind in a better place to go about your busy schedules.

With one less health concern off your mind, you can spend your mental energy elsewhere. You’re practically killing two birds with one stone!

Yoga allows you to practice mindfulness

Have you ever googled exercises to help with back pain before? If you look closely, most of those exercises are also commonly incorporated into yoga routines. Unknotting some very tight muscles is extremely relaxing. While doing the exercises, you might even release muscle tension in spots you never knew were tight to begin with. A proper tension release will greatly improve your sleep quality. A well-rested body is known to better heal itself, so providing your brain with higher sleeping quality is undoubtedly for the greater good.

Yoga strengthens both your mind and body

It’s similar to the concept of working out at the gym. The resilience you put out to get through yoga routines (some yoga types are more active than others) fill you with a sense of achievement at the end of it. On days where you’re too bummed out to get anything done, that small sense of achievement can be a significant motivator. In the long run, you’ll notice your mind and body getting stronger.

Yoga aids in regulating stress or burnouts

It has been proven in multiple scientific researches that yoga is a positive intervention to regulating stressful emotions. When you’re stressed, burnt out or experienced trauma, your mind tends to experience a sense of emotional dysregulation, resulting in you feeling physically incompetent. In yoga, these body-oriented techniques stimulate you to be more aware of the sensation in your bodies, in return empowering you to regulate emotions. It’s a to-and-fro process.

Improving mental health well-being isn’t just a one-action-fix-all kind of situation. It requires a long span of small wins, wins that doing yoga can bring you. It’s not as hard and overwhelming as it may seem to be, so take this as a sign to start practicing yoga!