The Impact of Yoga's Philosophy on Student's Mental Health

Yoga is one of the six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophical traditions. There is a broad variety of yoga schools, practices, and goals in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. The term 'yoga' in the Western world often denotes a modern form of Hatha yoga, consisting largely of the postures called Asanas.

The origins of yoga have been speculated to date back to pre-Vedic Indian traditions; it is mentioned in the Rigveda, but most likely developed around the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, in ancient India's ascetic and śramaṇa movements. The chronology of earliest texts describing yoga-practices is unclear, varyingly credited to Upanishads.

Yoga gurus from India later introduced yoga to the West, following the success of Swami Vivekananda in the late 19th and early 20th century with his adaptation of yoga tradition, excluding asanas. Outside India, it has developed into a form of posture-based physical fitness, stress-relief and relaxation technique. Yoga in Indian traditions, however, is more than physical exercise; it has a meditative and spiritual core. One of the six major orthodox schools of Hinduism is also called Yoga, which has its own epistemology and metaphysics, and is closely related to Hindu Samkhya philosophy.

Many studies have tried to determine the effectiveness of modern yoga as a complementary intervention for cancer, schizophrenia, asthma, and heart disease. The results of these studies have been mixed and inconclusive.

Yoga, is a combination of physical, mental and spiritual practice originated in ancient India. In today’s always running and competitive world nobody thinks about keeping some time aside for yoga. It turns out that yoga not only beneficial for adults. Yes, yoga would also beneficial for students. We know that students are commonly don’t have much spare time to spend for yoga because of homework, tasks, preparing for exam, social lives, and many more. But it is essential for students to start doing yoga as soon as possible, because it will bring a lot of positive things for your academic stuff. Yoga and Studying in life of student won’t add up together even to form a sentence but this is where most of us go wrong. Yoga is not only relaxing but helps in improving concentration and fitness.

Today’s era is all about running around and working hard but one hour daily of yoga can help in improving concentration which indirectly and fortunately for today’s teenager leads to grade improvement as this helps them concentrate better making learning easier and efficient.

As students don’t have time for managing or keeping track of their health they easily fall in traps of various diseases and health problems like blood pressure, headache, heart problems, breathing difficulties, joint problems and many other. Doing yoga can reduce the risk of getting a serious heart problem by manifolds, also balances the blood pressure and helps in regulating the natural breathing rhythm. The relaxation and exercising components of yoga have a major role in treatment and prevention of high blood pressure. It lowers the blood pressure therefore reducing the need for high blood pressure medication for the people suffering from same. Breathing problems can be cured by yoga to a large extent including asthma and asthma attacks without resorting to drugs, with the help of pranayama along with the treatment is found to be helpful in a great length. Yoga not only helps with physical problems but also emotionally. With so much stress and everything going around a lot of student’s are victimised to many emotional problems leading to them being prone to disorders like anxiety, depression and panic attacks. Yoga has been found to resulting reduction of mental disorders by many more scores than drugs and therapists. This is because yoga helps in getting a sense of tranquility and connecting with your inner self and leading to self-awareness. Yoga promotes healing from the inside rather than looking good on the outside. It teaches people how to respect and love their own bodies – an essential message for young children who are constantly advertised with warped body image ideas on social media.

With self-love, comes self-care and yoga can teach these values at a very young age. The children learn to be comfortable in their own skin and nurture it well. The vastness of academic curriculum alone can baffle students and yet, they deal with many other extra-curricular activities and social life as well. By practising pranayama and mindfulness, students really learn how to handle the anxiety and manage the different aspects of life effectively. The peace of mind stimulates the release of good hormones that have a snowball effect and uplifts the disposition of the child in general.

Yoga is tangible. Through Asanas, children build strength, endurance, confidence as well as the mind-body connection. You can self-assess the changes and positivity you feel after having engaged in this for some time. This confidence attained on the yoga mat is then carried into the real world as well along with strength, compassion and acceptance.

Yoga is an age-old art but is relevant in present times more than ever before. When it comes to benefits of yoga, this is just the tip of the iceberg. It has multiple gross and fine rewards which can help you live a healthy and joyful life.

Yoga is gentle and its gentleness provides relief to the joints by giving gentle pressure to the troubled joints. The easy stretches in conjunction with deep breathing exercises relieve tension that binds up the muscles and further tightens the joints making it a great combination of relaxation and exercising.

Yoga can improve physical as well as mental health of an individual. Most of the time of student’s is spent in sitting down and working which increases chance of getting obesity and uneasiness of breathing and this can also lead to a lot of mental stress adding up because of lost peace of mind. A fast-paced life of students also includes a lot of fast food to cope up with the speed. Practising yoga can help with weight management. Regular and longer sitting down increases stiffness, pain and fatigue in body. Yoga stretches helps in joint lubrication and thereby increasing flexibility of the body.

Yoga is an art which connects our body, mind and soul together and makes us strong and peaceful. Yoga is necessary because it keeps us fit, helps burst stress and maintains out overall health. A healthy mind can concentrate well and do everything.

Breathing is fundamental to life and how we breathe is directly related to our overall well-being. Good breathing affects our movement, our posture, and our ability to handle stress in a positive way. Through pranayama and other breathing exercises in yoga, students can learn at a young age how to master the technique of breathing correctly and improve the quality of their life. Through controlled breathing and controlled movement, yoga teaches people self-control. As a result, they do not react impulsively or make hasty decisions even in an emotional state. With self-mastery, a person can keep his or her anger in check and make rational decisions when required. If a young yogi can learn self-control at a young age, indeed, no door can ever be closed for him or her.

One of the main benefits of practicing yoga is that it helps manage stress. Stress is common these days and is known to have devastating effects on one’s body and mind. Due to stress people develop serious problems like sleeping disorder, neck pain, back pain, headaches, rapid heart rate, sweaty palms, dissatisfaction, anger, insomnia and inability to concentrate. Yoga is known to be really effective in curing these kinds of problems over a period of time. It helps a person in managing stress by meditation and breathing exercise and improves a person’s mental well-being. Regular practice creates mental clarity and calmness thereby relaxing the mind.

Students doing yoga on a regular basis feel the improvement of their ability to think on a different perspective. They spoke of how yoga significantly helped them to become open minded and think clearer than before. This thing, undoubtedly, would improve the personality of the student. They will be able to accept other people’s opinion which are totally different with their opinion. In addition to that, other students also said that yoga helps them to avoid overthinking about a problem and thus, they could make a rational decision over their problems.

There are several reasons why yoga would improve your academic performances. First, yoga will teach you on how to focus and concentrate on your job and thus, it will improve your concentration while doing your tasks in school. Second, yoga will also teach you how to relax and take a deep breath. This thing would be beneficial, especially when you’re feeling nervous before taking the exam.

Alongside its myriad health benefits, yoga also boosts immunity and prevents attacks from different viruses and bacteria by increasing the levels of antibodies. Yoga promotes blood circulation which can work wonders for the skin, hair and nails. A healthy body feels and looks happy. Yoga basically means union of body, mind and soul. When you start doing yoga your body, mind and energies will be aligned in such a way that your health will flourish, mind will be peaceful. Health will flourish means your body will not have any disease. You will start to grow spiritually. So basically, yoga will deal with all the levels physical, mind and at the level of your energies.