Good old yoga. Possibly the most imitating and simultaneously mocked form of exercise we see while scrolling through Instagram these days. While just the word “yoga” conjures up a twenty something white girl who goes to a studio for a class before her weekly brunch, it's one of the oldest practices in the world. Originating in India some 5,000 years ago, the practice was brought to the US and appropriated between the 1920s and 40s. Even though we have a certain vision for the type of person who practices yoga, we fail to see the true benefits of yoga and see why maybe it's worth a second try.

1. You learn to slow down.
It's hard to do things the slow way today. Every moment of our lives is dictated by a go-go-go mentality. We seem to be rushing from one thing to the next so when we have the opportunity to take the slow way around something, we opt out. We’re conditioned to expect everything to fit into the span of a thirty second video. We get pissed when our tweets take longer than ten seconds to send. The nice thing about yoga, while able to be modified to fit a busy lifestyle (because let's be honest, that's unavoidable),is that you're forced to slow down. You have to take each deep breath and bend into each pose and take the right amount of time to do all that or else the practice serves you no purpose. It's a nice break.

2. It teaches you how to work towards a goal
My biggest goal in practicing yoga is to be able to do an inversion, which is essentially just a fancy handstand. But without near daily practice, it will be impossible to reach this goal. I can't do it yet. My arms are still weak and my upper body strength isn't anywhere near inversion standards but at least I know what path to take. Setting a goal within yoga is figuring out how to push your body in a healthy way towards something you want. Maybe your goal is to just hold downward dog for longer than five seconds but it's still something to work towards.

3. Literally anyone can do it
Like with anything in life, if you want to be really good at something you have to actually try really hard. If you want to be good at yoga, like really good, there's a way to do that. If you just want to stretch and learn to steady your body? There's a way to do that. If you work a lot and only have twenty minutes to spare? There's a way to do that. You can find a way to modify almost anything in yoga to fit your lifestyle. There's yoga for anyone at any age.

4. You learn to respect yourself, others and the practice
You can't really do yoga without learning to respect yourself. You stop seeing your body as just something you put food into or change to please someone else. You start trusting it. You start seeing it as this amazing and unique thing that you can build and make stronger and something to take care of. In this practice, that respect for your body will extend to your mind and to others. You put out better energy which helps others do the same. It's one exciting thing to see changes in your body but completely different to feel them in yourself.