The continued practice of yoga brings medium and long-term rewards for the body and mind, the combined physical, psychological, and spiritual aspects of an individual. 

It also yields an instant feel-good effect. It just feels better to inhabit a looser, freer body than a contracted, tight, bound-up one.

The human body was designed to move freely by integrating all the parts that make up the whole self, practitioners often have a sense of standing taller and feeling freer. 

Afterward, they are relaxed and happily at ease. 

According to Indian philosophy, everything is a combination of three essential qualities called the gunas: sattva (a pure,balanced state), rajas (activity, restlessness), and tamas (inertia, laziness, depression).

Most students start a yoga practice either in a restless or hyperactive state, or in a lazy or lethargic state.

By the end of most practice sessions they have been brought toward an uplifted state,  both mentally and physically.

Yoga brings a sense of expansion on many levels. It allows you to rediscover an internal sense of wholeness that, in today’s fast-paced world, is often lost. If you start with a restless body and a hyperactive mind that is difficult to focus, the appropriate practice will work out physical tensions and calm both mind and emotions. If you start with a dull, lethargic bodymind, the right practice will bring back a sense of aliveness to your body, refresh your mind, and give you a sense of peace. Every yoga practice represents a raising of consciousness that creates a reversal of its current state or condition. Whenever you truly come back to yourself, you have the chance to appreciate your essential wholeness.

 

Yoga gives you the tools to move from passion to the clarity of dispassion, from distress to de-stress, from dis-ease to ease. It unwinds you, moving you from a bound-up, contracted way of existing to a more easygoing, free-flowing way of interrelating. If your yoga practice expands you and gives you joy, then it is the right yoga practice for you.