You may not immediately think of yoga as an anti-aging or beauty regimen, but practising yoga on a regular basis can help you look and feel younger than your chronological age. While some signs of ageing are inevitable, not everyone ages at the same rate. Engaging in healthy practices such as yoga can help slow down the ageing process and make the most of the age you are.

Here are seven ways yoga helps practitioners look younger.

Flexibility: Using It and Not Losing It

Yoga keeps you flexible. Bodies stiffen with age and as a result older adults have the potential to lose range of motion. The more a person’s range of motion is restricted, the harder it becomes to do daily tasks. If you’re not flexible, you don’t move fluidly. You don’t move like a vital healthy person.  Increased flexibility means moving more gracefully and enables you to enjoy an active life. That, in turn, contributes to the happiness you feel and radiate.

Your posture matters more than you think. Once you stand up straight, you naturally feel more confident and energetic.

A Slimmer Trimmer Silhouette

It’s not just the exercise itself that jettisons the pounds. Yoga practitioners tend to develop a healthy respect for their bodies, which leads to less harmful and more nutritious food choices. And because practitioners find an effective way to alleviate stress and become more mindful, there’s less self-destructive stress eating. Those who practised yoga ate a healthier diet and cut back on alcohol and cigarettes because they focused on improving overall health.

As well as helping you lose weight, yoga can firm your abs, arms and legs so you look better in and out of your clothes. Lost inches add up to a slimmer, trimmer you.

Subtracting Years From Your Skin

Yoga is good for your skin.  That healthier look may be attributed to a few factors.First, yogic postures can help improve circulation, which flushes out toxins and supplies the oxygen and nutrients that help skin repair itself and glow with good health. A UCLA study conducted in 2012 found that yoga was effective at reducing skin inflammation, which is a response to chronic stress. Inflammation can be a culprit in such skin problems such as puffy eyes, allergic reactions and conditions such as psoriasis.

You Are What You Digest

Yoga can improve your digestion. It was proven that yoga was effective at moderating blood sugar levels. While yoga obviously exercises visible groups of muscles, some postures also provide a massage for the parts of your body that you can’t see, your internal organs. That’s especially true for the digestive organs. Yoga helps reduce digestive woes by easing stress, increasing blood flow to your organs, and by stimulating the digestive system.

When your digestive system works well, your body can effectively eliminate toxins and get the nutrients it needs. Your posture and graceful movements make you seem attractive and younger than your years.

De-Stressing Success

Researchers demonstrated that yoga is effective at combating stress. It’s one of yoga’s most important health benefits. Stress has been named as a factor in a variety of serious diseases, including heart disease and cancer. And it’s not just physical conditions. Stress can worsen depression and anxiety. And stress can also accelerate signs of ageing.

Yoga practitioners are better able to moderate their stress responses because yoga practice lowers levels of cortisol, the hormone released by the body as a reaction to stress. It’s the fight or flight hormone that enables you to react quickly when you are in a situation that seems threatening. So, if you deal with enough stress, cortisol can put you on almost permanent levels of high alert. Higher levels of cortisol make it difficult to maintain a healthy weight. More stress. More cortisol. More eating. More fat. And it is a particularly stubborn kind of fat that can be hard to lose.