Yoga and meditation, both go together like hand in glove. With both these spiritual health practices increasingly becoming popular over the past few decades, we tend to combine both of them together. When we become aware of one practice, the other isn’t far behind.
However despite the correlation between the two, many people choose either one or the other. The important factor to note, is that meditation helps to relax the body, which is an important part of the process to have a relaxed mind, this in turn makes it far easier to allow your body to take on the various yoga positions, such as the Lotus position.
Below lists the five key ways that meditation makes us better at Yoga:
1. Meditation assists in the focus of Asana
Practising Yoga means exercising the body, however it is also important to exercise the mind at the same time. Every time the body is in an asana pose, the focus should also be on the pose itself. With the mind focused on the body only then can asana be experienced in full. Yoga Asana is known to possess many health benefits, but in order to take advantage of those benefits the focus has to be on what the body is doing.
Meditation is widely known to improve focus and concentration, and as a result this allows complete mind-body immersion in the Asana.
2. Meditation lowers oxygen consumption.
A less well known fact is that meditation changes the way the body uses oxygen. Research has shown that meditation lowers oxygen consumption rate by 10%. This increases our control of our breath during and after meditation. For anyone who gets short of breath when practicing Yoga, trying meditation before and during your yoga session and practicing mindful breathing can help regulate your breath.
Subsequently this helps in being able to practice Yoga for a longer period of time, and assert more control of pranayama.
3. Obtain the philosophical aspects of Yoga:
If you would like to truly embrace the yogic lifestyle, then it is, then it is important you get in touch with the philosophical side, meditation can be of great help in this aspect too.
The Yogic system itself has many meditations, these include – Trataka (Still Gazing,) chakra meditations, mantras, and sound meditations (Nada Yoga). Not only do these meditation techniques help to train the mind, they also play an integral part in preparing the mind-body for more advanced stages of yoga.
4. Experiencing a lot of sweat during hot yoga? Meditation can help.
Anyone who practices hot yoga (Bikram Yoga) knows what it can be like to sweat a little too much. Meditation can change that by reducing your heart-rate and blood pressure thereby cooling your body down and reducing the amount you sweat.
5. Meditation improves balance
According to a scientific study, the power of meditation can help in increasing our level of balance. According to Professor Ying Kee from Nanyang’s Technical University (based in Singapore) a study was carried whereby 32 men were split into two groups, Kee requested all members of each group to stand on one leg while holding a basin of water, Kee asked one group to be mindful of their hands, and the other group to think about anything they liked. The balance of members of both groups were tested, the results showed that being mindful of the body increased the level of balance, where as those group members who were thinking about something other than what they were doing showed a much lower level of balance.
Time for a change?
Anybody who is serious about getting better at Yoga should take on both the physical and mental exercises. By practising meditation not only do we embrace a more yogic lifestyle, but also we prepare our mind for success in the yoga studio.