Don’t start any workout because it is a fad. Get into it because of all the benefits it offers you. Here’s what you will achieve if you practice yoga seriously.

Stress-relief: Stress is one of the biggest killers of our times and leads to a range of lifestyle and metabolic diseases. Yoga helps you manage stress and anxiety and thereby reduces their harmful effects on your body. The relaxation induced by yoga lowers the levels of the stress hormone cortisol, your blood pressure and heart rate. It also improves digestion and the immune system.

Better sleep: Yoga will make you less stressed and thereby help you sleep better. Research too has shown that yoga is a boon for people struggling with insomnia.

Relieves chronic pain: Studies have shown that doing yoga on a regular basis helps manage chronic pain in people suffering from cancer, multiple sclerosis, autoimmune diseases, arthritis and joint pains.

More strength: Yoga gives a full workout to all the muscles of your body so, over time, you gain a lot of all-over strength.

Flexibility and mobility: Yoga makes you more flexible and that helps increase your mobility as well. Therefore you are able to do everyday movements like kneeling, bending or reaching out for something with much ease.

Detoxifies: The kind of physical activity that yoga involves, helps your internal organs perform better and do their function of detoxifying your body at optimum levels. Deep yogic breathing improves lung function, while the sweat that is produced while doing yoga rids the body of toxins.

Inner peace: Is the daily grind and the constant commotion that you live in driving you crazy? Get back your inner calm by doing yoga. In fact, according to the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Sutra 1.2, Yoga chitta vrtti nirodha, or “Yoga is the stilling (regulation, quieting) of the turnings of the mind.”

Better breathing technique: Yoga teaches us how to breathe in the correct manner by making us aware of our breaths. It helps us identify our breathing patterns and shows us how our emotions affect it. Taming our breathing can help calm us down. Deep yogic breathing is also very good for health and studies to have shown that it is beneficial for the heart, brain, digestion and immune system.

Weight management: Even though yoga is a spiritual practice, it is also a kind of exercise that can help you lose weight and maintain it in the long run. While yoga makes you burn calories, it also helps you lose weight by curtailing the production of the stress hormone cortisol that makes you put on kilos. A yoga practice strengthens your core and results in better posture and upped general fitness levels.