The Benefits of Yoga are Incremental

I have been practicing yoga, mindfulness, breathing and meditation for a little less than three years. For me, improvement has been slow but incremental. I would say that I witnessed a five percent positive impact on my health during the first year I started these practices. The second year, the effect was perhaps 10 percent. It is now the second half of the third year and I estimate that my health is about 20 percent better than it was a year ago as a result of these practices.

When we start learning mindfulness latter in life, it can be rather difficult because we have to unlearn the negative thinking patterns and behaviors that we have become addicted to.

Learning mindfulness at a young age can save people a great deal of misery throughout their lives, but most of us do not learn to cultivate awareness at a young age, although we spend a lot of time learning things that are not very important in our lives, such as calculus. However, we are never stuck. Reversing acquired negative habits is possible at any age.

Mindfulness helped me avoid the little things that I was doing to myself that were making me more stressed out. It also helped me identify solutions that were right in front of me but that I had failed to notice.

It is amazing how we can go through life suffering from a problem, not realizing that the solution is right before our eyes. Some of these are little things but they add up because they were numerous and frequent.

We have a tendency to unknowingly do things that are harmful to us or attempt to solve problems in a counterproductive way. Constantly being aware helps us notice these things.

We have a tendency to indulge in negative thinking patterns and destructive emotions that don't help us in any way. In fact they only hurt us--emotions such as hatred, craving, delusion, anger, fear, jealousy, resentment, anxiety, sadness, guilt and greed.

Mindfulness helped me be on the look out for these destructive emotions and detect their early signs.

Yoga and mindfulness are also helping me deal with counter-productive bodily reactions that happen as a result of physical pain and discomfort, such as stressing my muscles and holding my breath and limiting my movement.

Also see: The effect of positive thinking on our health is accumulative