As you start to feet and took better and unfold more of your full potential, these positive mental and emotional states occur as a consequence.

Within a few weeks you will feel calmer and have better concentration. Within a few months, rejuvenation of the organs will start to occur.

You will take years from your face and add years to your life. As you get older, you will take on an ageless appearance.

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Does yoga help in weight management? Most definitely. There are a number of factors involved. Firstly, some of the asanas stimulate sluggish glands to increase their hormonal secretions. The thyroid gland, especially, has a big effect on our weight because it affects body metabolism. There are several asanas, such as the shoulder stand and the fish posture, which are specific for the thyroid gland. Fat metabolism is also increased, so fat is converted to muscle and energy. This means that, as well as losing fat, you will have better muscle tone and a higher vitality level.

Secondly, yoga deep breathing increases the oxygen intake to the body cells, including the fat cells. This causes increased oxidation or burning up of fat cells. ). Yogic exercises induce more continuous and deeper breathing which gradually burns, sometimes forcefully, many of the calories already ingested.

Thirdly, yogic practices that reduce anxiety tend to reduce anxious eating. When under nervous strain we tend to gulp our food without attaining much genuine satisfaction. We end up in eating more. If, on the other hand, we approach our meals with greater calmness of mood, whether produced by habits which have calmed our life or by yoga (like a pause for prayer before a meal), we tend to be less likely to overeat in a frantic effort to quiet our midday anxieties.

Lastly, yogic aids may be employed between meals whenever one becomes tempted to search for a snack. One may deliberately turn to yoga, rather than to the icebox or snack bar, when he feels the need for a lift or relief from restless nervousness. Practicing yoga may make you aware of your weight problem that may also act as a deterrent from overeating.

If you are not overweight, your weight will remain about the same. If you are underweight, you will gain weight. The weight you gain will be healthy firm tissue, not fat. That is, yoga will tend to produce the ideal weight for you. This is due to yoga's effect of 'normalizing' glandular activity.

An article that appeared in the San Francisco Examiner of October 13, 1959 shows that the weight reduction potential of yoga was recognized in the USA more than quarter of a century ago.

"Would you like to lose weight without resorting to the miseries of dieting? Well, try the miseries of Yoga exercises instead. One staunch advocate is Metropolitan Opera star Robert Merrill, who has been practicing these exercises for two years, and keeps trying to win converts. In those two years he has lost twenty pounds and now he's down to a trim, rhythmic-breathing one hundred and sixty, even though he continues to eat like a lumber jack. 'At one time I went on a lot of diets but just couldn't lose any weight,' he said. 'Then along came Yoga and look at me now.' He punched his hard flat stomach and started breathing through one nostril. And to further demonstrate what it's all about, he did a little flip and stood on his head. After that he showed the lotus position, legs scissored under the body. Was he still breathing through one nostril? Yes, the other one. 'If people weren't so lazy they wouldn't have to worry about diets,' he said."

For those whose eating habits, whether at meals or between meals, are believed to be due to feelings of weakness rather than anxieties, most yogic postures and breathing exercises are designed to increase one's strength. Hence, they may relieve feelings of weakness more effectively than additional eating. The exercises themselves, although consuming some energy, also store up energy which, when combined with oxidizing breathing, provide energy that is ready for use rather than for storage.

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Those practicing yoga experiences a number of factors that results in a profound effect on their mental health. These can be classified under:

1. reduction of tension and
2. restoration of pliability.
3. "personal" and
4. "social."

Many people who practice yoga speak of "freeing the mind from mental disturbances," "calming the spirit," or "steadying the mind." Reduction of nervousness, irritability and confusion, depression and mental fatigue are some of the benefits experienced. One experiences a relief from the pressure of his "compulsions." His nervousness, especially any jitteriness, should subside or disappear.

The extent to which these benefits may be expected will depend in part upon whether or not one can approach and participate in them willingly and wholeheartedly; for one who tries to practice postures with anxiety cripples his chances for very much benefit.

"The positive side of the benefits from a full round of yogic exercises may be described as renewal of mental agility. Both mood and capacity for alertness, attentiveness and willingness to tackle problems revive. One may not be able to rekindle boundless enthusiasm late in a working day; early morning, or even noonday, efforts to recharge mental energies can revive a full measure of willingness. Traditional phrases, such as restored "spiritual vitality," intend to convey the complex idea of mental spryness, agreeableness, resiliency, and feelings of confidence and self-sufficiency. Some even testify to attaining feelings of buoyancy and euphoria; these then provide a background or mood of well-being and assurance such that one naturally more fully enjoys both his ability and the worthiness of being more tolerant and generous."

Archie Bahm, ‘Executive Yoga’

a. Avoidance of fear: Yoga is said to result in the reduction of a variety of mental ills. These may range all the way from vague feelings of frustration, persecution, insecurity, on the one hand, to acute and specific types of insanity, on the other.

Yoga is not a cure all for all conditions. But its attack upon, and diminution of, some basic mental ills may indeed be just enough to pay dividends that grow in magnitude.

If, through use of yogic techniques, we can merely halt and reverse some mental cancer, some compulsive complex that keeps us chained to unrelenting, omnipresent and gradually increasing anxiety, we may reset a course which will bring us around to a healthier adjustment. We are all at times insane. We are all, in some degree, insane. Overwhelming waves of tension and stress, which may catch us in periods of physical and mental exhaustion, can produce a spiritual explosion which leaves us so helpless that we are at a loss to know how it all came about.

By recurrent, regular efforts to reduce tension through yogic exercises, we may stay and finally reverse our tendencies toward insanity.

Most of us succumbs to fears and anxieties – some valid and some purely imaginary. For example, as one gets older, he begins to fear that his life has not been sufficiently worth while, that he has fallen short of his goals, that he has failed to attain his proper ambition, that he has lost out in the race to keep up with the Joneses or in his attempt to measure up "in the sight of God"-however he happens to conceive his shortcoming.

Thus, when Ramacharaka, in his ‘Hindu-Yogi Science of Breath’, says one may, by controlled breathing, "practically do away with fear and worry and the baser emotions," he refers to the growing ability of a devoted practitioner to diminish the power which both momentary and permanent fears have over us. One seeks to develop habits of resistance to the disturbing effects of excitement, ambition, antagonism and frustration.

The long-range goal of yoga is not just momentary relaxation, but the living of a relaxed life.

The goal of yoga is confident living. Its aim is to replace pessimism and its varieties such as cynicism with a "Yea-saying" appreciation of life, not only on any given day, but as a gracious, wonderful whole. When you achieve the yogic spirit, then you can say with the Stoics, "I accept the universe."

If you cannot accept all of it, because some problems remain unavoidably troublesome, then you will accept the troubles which you have as (1) yours and (2) enough for you, without wishing you had still more troubles.

Poise, serenity, contentedness, patience, assurance-all of these are positive mental values attainable by anyone who has achieved a willingness to be at peace with himself and the world. The confidence desired is not just enough to do the day's work but enough to live one's whole life and one can do his day's work more confidently if he has already predisposed himself to living his life with trustful serenity.

Thus a person seeks through yoga not merely momentary mental agility, but an agile life; not just momentary pliability, but a continuingly pliable existence; not just momentary relief from disturbance, but a permanently peaceful perspective.

Although not everyone who undertakes to experiment with yoga can expect to achieve or maintain the goal described by Shri Yogendra, Yoga: Personal Hygiene, as "exuberant and exultant health, he should notice the sun more often when it shines. Swami Sivananda pictures the goal as "ecstatic joy" (Yoga Asanas).

Dechanet, a Roman Catholic monk who was led into yoga by his Catholic predecessors, gives a vivid account of how he uses yogic techniques as aids to worship. He describes a "euphoria that pervades the story of my experiment. I wish to make it clear that this euphoria is real and lasting and spreads through the various levels of my daily life, physical, Psychical and spiritual" (Christian Yoga). Even though few of us will achieve anything like perpetual exuberance, ecstatic joy or euphoria, attainment of a more trusting outlook on life provides a spiritual soil from which spiritual roses have a better chance to grow. The pragmatic experimentalist will say: "Try it and see."

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a. Yoga may reduce your annoyance with others and others' annoyance with you. If you become less irritable, you tend to irritate others less and tend to be less irritated by what others do when they present themselves as problems to you.

Your obdurate, demanding, insistent, morose attitudes can make you hard to get along with. Diminution of these should make you less difficult to deal with. The social effects-upon your colleagues and clients, superiors and inferiors, to say nothing of family, public officers and service specialists-could be overwhelming.

b. You tend to be easier to get along with and you tend to find others easier to get along with.

Or, if your personal improvement grows beyond mere contentment, to exuberant appreciation, you may find both more people liking you and you liking more people. You become more adaptable, reliable, steady, alert, responsive, ever-ready, patient, gentle and humane.

When this happens, you become recognized as a more desirable person to deal with.

If you develop a buoyant spirit, you will find that buoyancy is catching.

Others, seeing you as cheery, tend to respond in kind, reacting more cheerily to you.

Your rewards increase.

Beauty of figure, graceful carriage, melodious voice, glowing face and charming smile have all been mentioned as possible rewards of yogic practice.

Swami Sivananda says that "By practicing the Asanas regularly, men and women will acquire a figure which will enhance their beauty and that suppleness which gives them charm and elegance in every movement," and "be endowed with a peculiar glow in his face and eyes and a peculiar charm in his smile" (Yogic Home Exercises).

Clara Spring, expressing an American woman's point of view, reminds us that "A number of world-famous beauty courses contain certain exercises based on Yoga" (Yoga for Today).

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Yoga's view of sex is the same as of every other issue - moderation. Yoga considers sex to be a natural function, very beneficial in a loving relationship and, of course, essential for the continuation of the human race.

Yogis warn against overindulgence in sex since they consider this will deplete the life force. They state that the sexual secretions contain very concentrated life force and nutrients, since they contain the seeds of life. Depletion of life force results in a reduced vitality level and reduced resistance to disease. It also retards progress from the practice of yoga. A whole field of yoga called Tandric Yoga or Kundalini Yoga is concerned with harnessing the sexual power. Yoga enables one to get into meaningful relationships and enjoy the process, at the same time provides a path to use the powerful energy involved in sex.

The yogis consider that normal sexual function occurs when the reproductive system is in a state of optimum health. They have found that the most effective way of attaining this optimum health state is by doing yoga asanas and breathing exercises. Those who are physiologically weak and partially or wholly impotent may restore potency as they regain their physical health. Steadier practice of milder yogic exercises may yield results when more vigorous bodybuilding workouts end in undue exhaustion. Those who approach sexual matters nervously rather than relaxedly may profit from previous relaxing yogic exercises.

Marriage counselors suggest that a relaxed condition is one of the essentials for a harmonious sex relationship because when hurried and strained it leaves the couple (the woman especially) dissatisfied and irritated, adversely affecting her entire well being. Indra Devi, author of many books on yoga, remarked that "The wives of several of my students have often told me that since their husbands had taken up Yoga exercises, their marital relationships had undergone remarkable changes."

It's true that advanced yogis practice celibacy. They need every ounce of their life force for their quest for cosmic consciousness. They also know that the realization of their goal produces eternal bliss, besides which the brief pleasure of sex pales into insignificance. Their minds have progressed so far that they are not prepared to settle for a watered-down version of happiness.

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Pride, and especially anxiety about pride, is something which hatha yoga seeks to diminish or eliminate. We are not advocating pride, but some will choose to consider pride a value anyway. To one who has been dejected because he cannot do his work properly when he becomes tired, irritable, or haggard, any degree of refreshment may be accompanied by additional degrees of self-respect. Furthermore, one who has benefited from yoga may be moved to help his friends who are obviously in need; he may instruct others and be rewarded with appreciation due a gracious teacher.

But if one succeeds in achieving skill which provides health and self-confidence, one may justly raise his self-esteem simply by observing himself living the improved results as an achieved fact.

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Readers of treatises on yoga soon become familiar with a recurrent refrain. Yogic theory and practice lead to increased self-knowledge. Although many of these treatises extend the meaning of yoga beyond hatha yoga the values of self-knowledge indicated are intended to include those derivable from using breathing and posture exercises for attaining and maintaining health, physical and mental, and relaxation. The knowledge is not merely that of the practical kind relating to techniques, but especially of a spiritual sort pertaining to grasping something about the nature of the self at rest.

Knowing the self at rest, at peace, as a being rather than merely as an agent or doer, is a genuine kind of knowledge which usually gets lost in the rush of activities and push of desires. The value of discovering one's self and of enjoying one's self as it is, rather than as it is going to be, is indeed a value as well as a kind of knowledge.

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About the last thing one should expect from yoga is wealth. Yet, when certain facts are pointed out, it becomes obvious that here is a value not to be overlooked.

First of all, as Swami Sivananda argues, "Health is wealth.... If you do not possess good health you cannot prosper in any walk of life" (Yogic Home Exercises). As we can see from the factors listed under Physical Health and Mental Health, yoga does affect our ability to deal with the problems in our businesses and professions. Many factors affecting our day-to-day and long-range; capacities for achieving business and professional goals may be influenced by yogic endeavors. One can hardly calculate results, but still can easily sense the significance of improved health for business success.

Not only may one acquire more financially from good health, but he need spend less upon measures to alleviate illness. By reducing anxiety and desirousness, yoga tends to diminish our desires and the expenditures we make trying to satisfy those desires. A person who achieves peace with himself, even if only part of the time, has less motive for spending money to win the battle for satisfaction of his cravings. Yoga is less expensive than most other methods of attaining and maintaining health and relaxation.

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Yoga will benefit your sleep in three ways:

1. The quality of your steep will improve because of yoga's beneficial effect on the nervous system, and in particular the brain. This results from certain yoga asanas increasing the blood supply to the steep center in the brain, which has the effect of normalizing the steep cycle.
2. You will need less sleep because of the improved quality of your sleep, and because yoga increases the elimination of toxins from the body. On average, for every minute you put into yoga you will need one minute less sleep. This makes yoga an excellent time investment.
3. You will fall asleep in a shorter time. This is mainly because the body and mind are more relaxed.

Yoga will make you fall asleep sooner and improve the quality of your sleep so that you need less. You will have a more restful sleep because of the relaxing aspect of yoga and the subsequent relieving of stress, tension and fatigue.

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