Yoga for Heart: How Yoga Improves Cardiovascular Health

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Many people think that yoga practices are spiritual practices that enhance our spiritual powers and takes us on a spiritual path. But, they are not truly right. This is only just a part of yoga practices.

Actually, yoga is the combination of mental, spiritual and physical exercises, that involves a number of yoga poses and breathing exercises that heal us mentally and physically both.

Yoga has numerous health benefits in our body, and one among them is a benefit to cardiovascular health i.e benefit to the heart.

How Yoga Helps in Improving Cardiovascular Health

The cardiovascular system consists of heart, blood vessels, and blood. It is used to transport nutrition, hormones, and oxygen to the whole body and remove metabolic waste.

Yoga includes stretching exercises, physical postures (Asanas), breath control (Pranayama) and concentration techniques (Meditation) that make a flow of energy throughout the body. Yoga helps to detoxify the blood, improve the mind functions, and immune system.

Yoga practices are designed in such a way that these stabilize and relax the mind and body. Yoga practice makes the balance of energy in our body.

Here are some benefits of yoga, for a healthy heart.

Benefits of Yoga for Our Heart

Lower Blood Pressure 

Yoga practices itself includes physical and mental practices that help in reducing the stress level in the body. This helps in lowering the blood pressure in the body. Yoga practices prevent the following disorders caused by high blood pressure.

1. Heart Failure. Heart failure is a condition when the heart stops pumping the blood to other parts of the body. Yoga practice soothes and calms the heart and stimulates it for better functioning.
2. Stroke. Stroke is a condition when the blood vessel that takes nutrients to the brain is blocked. The reason behind the blockage could be anything, but most commonly a blood clot or burst of the blood vessel. In such a case, the brain loses its functions we fell unconscious. It is often caused by high blood pressure.

Increases Lung Capacity 

Yoga practices include a series of breathing exercises, that maintain the amount of oxygen in the body. The breathing practices utilize the full function of lungs, this results in increasing the capacity of the lungs.

Improves Circulation of Blood

Yoga practices clear all the blockage in the way of circulation of blood and this results in improved blood circulation. Yoga practices prevent the following disorders caused by the bad circulation of blood.

1. Arrhythmia. It refers to abnormal heartbeats. Sometimes the heartbeat can be very fast and sometimes it can be very slow. Yoga increases the function of the heart. As the heart is well functioning, the heart rates also improve.
2. Prevent a Heart Attack. A heart attack occurs when the blood circulation in some part of the heart is blocked by a blood clot or impurity. Yoga practice helps to make good blood circulation throughout the body especially in all the parts of the heart. These practices clean and circulate blood to every part of the heart.

Bad Cholesterol Level

Yoga includes cleaning exercises and mudra that helps to clean the impurities in the blood. This reduces the blood glucose level as well as cholesterol levels in the body.

Now, let’s discuss some yoga asanas and mudras that are beneficial for our cardiovascular health.

The following are the best two yoga asanas for heart health

Big-Toe Pose (Padangusthasana)

This is the best asana for relieving stress and tensions. To perform it, stand in Mountain pose, now bend from your hips and hold your big toes with the thumb index finger and middle finger of each hand.

Now make your back straight with inhalation, then fold forward and exhale. This regulates the flow of energy in your whole body, that creates a good blood circulation to the body and heart.

Head to Knee Forward Bend (Janu Sirsasana)

This is a very helpful yoga asana to relieve depression and anxiety. This is beneficial to cure high blood pressure. Sit in a yoga mat with legs extended forward. Now, bend the right knee outward and press it to the inner thigh of the left leg making a 90-degree angle.  Now inhale as you lift the arms and exhale as you bend from your hips and grab the sole of the left leg stretching your spine, shoulder, and hamstrings. Do this for 5-7 breaths, then change the leg.

Now comes the best yoga mudra that is specially designed to cure cardiovascular diseases and maintain the health of our hearts.

Apana Vayu Mudra

This is a simple hand gesture that relieves us from a variety of heart problems. To perform this mudra, you need to join the tip of the thumb with the tip of the middle finger and ring finger. After that curl the index finger and touch its tip at the baseline of the thumb.

This is the most suggested mudra for cardiovascular health. Research says performing this mudra has a good result on cardiovascular health. It states that this yoga mudra makes its effect through the nerve endings in fingers. The transaction of fingers sharpens nerves in the palm and wrist zone which makes a systemic impact on the cardiovascular system and improves it.

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