Benefits of Aqua Yoga

Aqua yoga offers a new spin to conventional yoga on a mat and gives practitioners a fun exercise experience.- By Beth Rush

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Yoga has become a popular choice of physical activity for many women. Aqua yoga — a variation — provides a fun and engaging environment, like a pool or a beach, for practitioners to work on. If you love experimenting with different movement activities, try aqua yoga for these benefits.

1. Helps Maintain Weight

Doing yoga in water has upsides for people living with obesity or are overweight. Since excess body fat can limit the range of motion or put too much pressure on joints when standing, the pool offers a safer setting for mindfulness practice. Water is buoyant so it helps support your weight and minimize joint stress. Now, you have no reason to skip your daily fat-burning exercise routine due to painful joints and muscles.

2. Relaxes the Mind and Body

The benefits of aqua yoga encompass both physical and mental health. Water has healing and detoxifying abilities and teachers bring these positive attributes into each session by integrating it with yoga. With water as a medium, doing yoga becomes more fun.

In most cases, you will have to modify the poses to adapt to the setting, such as using the pool wall as a mat. This new spin encourages you to focus on the practice and move away from things that bring you worries. Like traditional yoga, aqua yoga is a mindfulness practice that brings calm to the mind and body.

3. Increases Mobility and Motor Function

It's also a form of movement with little to no impact on the joints, knees, hips and ankles. It's an excellent choice of physical activity for those with pain problems who want to maintain an active lifestyle — like seniors.

Exercise is challenging for seniors due to their limited mobility and lack of balance. However, experts see an aquatic environment with a relatively low risk of falling as a solution to this problem. Based on a study, older adults who did aquatic exercise programs because their body types were not appropriate for dry-land fitness showed a positive effect on their motor control, balance, gait and postural mobility.

4. Improves Heart Health

One of the best benefits of aqua yoga is boosting heart health. Heart disease ranks high as one of the causes of death globally, with 80% of the premature deaths among Americans due to it. Aqua yoga offers the necessary physical activity to break away from a sedentary lifestyle.

Since you do it in a pool, it doesn’t feel like torture. The water provides enough resistance so you don’t overwork or abruptly move aching joints. Additionally, it’s a less strenuous activity, helping you stay consistent with your wellness plan.

5. Soothes Stress

Stress is the primary source of inflammation that leads to diseases. Yoga — in all of its forms — can help lower stress and increase your quality of life.

A recent study found that participants who practiced yoga for 12 weeks experienced less perceived stress and were less reactive, meaning they found it easier to relax. Moreover, they became more mindful and had better self-control and interoceptive awareness.

If you find it challenging to cope with stress, try attending a session of aqua yoga and see if it makes a difference for you.

6. Strengthens Immune System

The immunity-enhancing benefits of aqua yoga come from its ability to promote movement in the white blood cells that protect you from infections.

Any type of movement or exercise encourages the immune cells to move to other locations in the body to look for viruses and bacteria and destroy them before they can cause an illness. Every pose of Aqua yoga you do stimulates the soldiers of the body to work harder.

Aqua Yoga Has Several Benefits to Health

The benefits of aqua yoga are health-changing. It provides a new spin and extra benefits to practitioners. Water has a purifying ability, so submerging half of your body in the pool allows you to achieve better relaxation after each session.

Water also makes the training environment buoyant and resistant, an advantage for people with muscle or joint problems as pressure is lifted off these points. You have several reasons to try aqua yoga and incorporate it into your lifestyle.