Your Health

As well as enjoying yourself and feeling more relaxed, yoga has positive effects on several systems within your body. You can read about these below. When you visit us at Yoga Sutra Shala we want you to have the healthiest experience of yoga in the world.


Internal organs

The internal organs such as the liver and kidneys are massaged in yoga exercises keeping them healthy.

Immune system

Yoga strengthens the immune system. Many yoga postures such as cobra, fish, bridge and bow open up the chest and hence stimulate the thymus gland. The thymus gland has an important function in the role of the immune system.


Practice of yoga asanas helps to keep your blood circulation at its optimal hence your body can remove toxins and supply oxygen and nutrients to all the vital organs. Joints are also kept mobile. These are all important factors in helping keep you young.

Stronger back

​By strengthening the back muscles yoga helps to decrease the compression on your spine. In the long term this means a stronger and healthier lower back and a stronger and healthier upper back.

​Heart rate

Your heart rate is slowed down because yoga works to stimulate your 'parasympathetic nervous system'. This is the part of the nervous system within that relaxes us. Normal daily activities in the modern world increase the effects of the 'sympathetic nervous system' and hence our heart rate increases. Yoga returns our heart rate to normal.

Breathing rate

The breathing exercises of yoga combined with the activation of the sympathetic nervous system result in a lowered breathing rate. This means that the lungs will be working more effectively.


The balancing asanas develop strength in a very natural way by using your body's own weight as resistance. Arm balances develop upper body strength and leg balances develop lower body strength.


When you are stressed the muscles in your body tense up. Yoga takes the presupposition that the mind and the body are linked. Hence by stretching the muscles back out with asana practice, the muscles relax and as the muscles in the body relax, the mind automatically relaxes.

Healthier Heart

By lowering stress, helping you normalise your weight and providing cardiovascular exercise, yoga exercises help you to develop a healthy heart.

Gastrointestinal system

Asanas which work the abdominal region of your body improve the health of the gastrointestinal system.


Postures such as the plough work on the thyroid gland. The thyroid gland controls your metabolic rate. Once your metabolic rate has come to normal so does your body weight.


Yoga backward bending asanas such as bridge, camel and wheel strengthen your back muscles and hence strengthen your posture. Other asanas such as fish open up the chest and shoulder area hence correcting your posture.

Circulation and blood pressure

﻿Firstly, the way your blood circulates around your body is improved. Postures such as the inverted asanas help bring the blood back to your heart as your legs will be above rather than below the heart. This means your heart has to work less and can hence work more efficiently. It also means you are less likely to suffer from varicose veins as the effects of gravity on the blood circulation are reversed. Child's pose also helps bring your blood circulation back to normal. And the breathing techniques of yoga allow more oxygen to reach your organs so you have more energy within. More oxygen also reaches the skin and the brain so they are more healthy too.

Cardiovascular health

Exercises such as the sun salutations and the vinyasas provide very effective cardiovascular exercise hence exercising the heart. Endurance also improves as a result of a lower heart rate and more oxygen reaching the tissues within the body.

Core strength

The balancing asanas as well as other asanas used in yoga strengthen your core so helping with posture. Coordination and balance are also improved by practicing the balancing asanas.


As yoga postures help to relax your body and meditation and breathing techniques help to relax your mind you will find that your sleep improves.


​Postures such a fish, bridge, wheel and camel open up the intercostal muscles and hence the lungs and this in turn can help with the symptoms of asthma.

'Today, more than at any other time in the history of humanity, people in the West are facing stresses and tensions that are beyond their control ... Yoga, the oldest science of life, can teach you to bring stress under control - not only on a physical level, but on mental and spiritual levels too.'
​Swami Vishnu Devananda