People know yoga to be healthy, but just how healthy is it? What other benefits will you gain from practicing it, apart from maintaining a good body shape? Such questions are common asked by beginners in yoga during a yoga retreat or yoga teacher training, so what are the top four health benefits of yoga?

This article will help you understand just how yoga improves your health and these are not the usual benefits you may know of. Keep reading.

· Makes you much happier

You might think this is just a hoax, but yoga has proven to reduce depression and other mental conditions like stress too. According to scientists, the human body has hormones called serotonin which are produced in high levels with continuous yoga practice.

These hormones and the prefrontal cortex (left one), are findings that have been related to not only increasing happiness, but also your immunity. Therefore, next time you are feeling down after going through something; try sitting in Lotus or a back bend into a King-dancer pose.

· Helps create and maintain healthy relationships

Most of you must be thinking of marriages and couples, but yoga will help you become closer to your loved ones from all corners; spouses, siblings, friends or even parents. The most common scenarios are family members always having arguments over almost everything.

This makes your minds to be unsettled and you maintain very unhappy moods, which kills the bond you had with each other. Yoga helps to relax the mind by entering a peaceful state of mind, which in turn eradicates negative thoughts.

· Improves your immune system

Did you know that your body is a blend of three; mind, body and the spirit? Any abnormality in that occurs in your mind will disrupt the body and vice versa. For example, most people who suffer from headaches are caused by an irregularity in the body and not stress (especially when you do not have anything on your mind).

Through yoga, this can be dealt with by improving your immunity. How does this happen? The exercises include massages to pressure points, meditation to release any negativity and doing poses that will definitely strengthen your whole body.

· Slows aging process

One major role yoga plays in improving your health is by stimulating detoxification. This is a process where toxins of every king are removed from your system; it is more like cleansing the mind and body. Aging is known to progress rapidly with such toxins in your system, therefore by this process; it will be greatly delayed.