Yoga Helps You To Lower Your Stress Level

By Renee Barnes-Orozco

Harmony With Your Mind And Body

Practicing yoga builds your ability to calm, focus, balance, and relax yourself. The time you spend practicing yoga and meditation allows you to calm your thoughts, and relax your body. You can learn to focus your physical and mental energy more effectively and thereby be more vital, creative, and efficient in all your activities. Because when you focus your attention on breathing and moving your body in space, you are more focused in the moment. The key to getting the best out of each pose is to focus not only on your body and positioning, but also on your breathing.

Your Body Flexibility And Strength

Yoga can help to improve your body flexibility and strength. Yoga creates symmetry throughout your whole body, making you strong and flexible in a balanced way. As your core gets stronger and your flexibility improves, your posture automatically improves. Yoga helps to correct and improve your posture which can relieve back pain, change the look of your body shape and help you to feel and look more confident. As you build on your practice daily, it will have many extra benefits to help better your shape and lower your stress level. You will begin to feel the difference. You will feel lighter inside (both body and mind). You will begin to notice that many things that used to bother you before no longer do. It's possible your relationships will begin to improve. All because you are feeling less stressed, balanced and your muscles will begin to feel stronger, longer and more flexible.

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The Mindful Breathing Involved With Yoga

The way you breathe is most important while working on the mat. A gentle yoga class is a very basic yoga class which focuses on the relaxation aspect of yoga practices. The practice of yoga involves stretching the body and forming different poses, while breathing slow and controlled. Each class ends with a quiet relaxation, meditation, and pranayama practice. Restorative yoga is a gentler style of yoga and focuses on muscle relaxation and a steady-state breath. Vinyasa yoga is a flowing style of yoga where movements are taken with the breath. Whichever way you practice, focusing on your breath is key to get the most out of yoga and meditation. It is also one of the best ways to slow down and clear your mind of all the clutter going on inside and around you.

Working With Your Breath

The cobra pose opens your chest to let your lungs take in more air. Slowly lift your hips while your legs are firmly on the ground and push your chest up with your arms so your body starts to look like a cobra rising up. If pushing all the way up with your arms is too much, leave your elbows on the floor. Keep focusing on your breath as you do this. The key is to breathe deeply from the abdomen, getting as much fresh air as possible in your lungs. If you were to put your hand on your stomach, it should move in and out as you inhale and exhale. As you breathe the air in, allow your stomach, back, sides, and rib cage to expand. As you breathe in and out through your nose, slowing your breathing pace, you should feel your stomach expanding and flattening. Don't breathe too fast or you might get to feeling light headed! Remember, you are doing controlled breathing.

Release Of Built-up Tension And Stress

There are various stress-relieving exercises which can really contribute to reduce tension and stress. Though all stress is not bad, there is good stress, which can help you get things done, and there is bad stress which causes physical and emotional distress and damage. A deep inhalation followed by a long, slow exhalation is an effective way to begin releasing stress and tension. As you may already know, yoga is a great way to de-stress and reduce anxiety. Exercise is crucial for relieving stress, even if yoga is not something you want to try. You can smile during yoga, and even laugh, which is a great stress reliever too. Laughing yoga anyone?

The Lower Body And The Blood Circulation

In Bikram yoga, the heated room promotes sweating which helps rid toxins from the body while loosening and stretching the muscles to prevent injuries. Water flushes unwanted toxins from your body and keeps your brain sharp. When the body relaxes the intestines relax and better help to let the body release toxins and waste matter. Pranayama allows the entire body to get oxygenated and burns out toxins from cells. By making the body work more efficiently, Japanese Yoga will help prevent injuries as well as heal and rehabilitate existing ones. All will help with relieving stress during and for some time after.

A Common Way To Deal With Stress

Yoga helps deal with physiological and psychological effects with a greater sense of peace and acceptance. Practicing yoga helps with losing weight, makes you stress-free and helps you meet other resolutions too. Many psychological diseases can be treated with the regular practice of yoga. Patients with physical limitations can benefit from yoga breathing alone. Stress is a major contributing factor to aging and is a guaranteed to make you age faster. Stress also has been known to be a contributing factor for many other diseases. Augment sounds with mental images of stress being washed or blown away and you should be able to better handle day to day stress and the pressure it puts on your body and mind.

At Least 10 To 20 Minutes A Day

A quick way to help you manage stress is once you wake up you should stand for a few minutes then lie down on your back and close your eyes. To practice pranayama, at first, you might want to sit cross legged against a wall or lay on your back so you are comfortable. At the end of the set, relax, lying on your back with your eyes closed for 5-20 minutes. With the first breath, you say 10 to yourself, with the next breath, you say nine, and so on. You can close your eyes and visualize yourself at your favorite vacation place. Usually at the end of every yoga session, especially Hatha, you will spend about five to ten minutes in deep meditation.

We all have our own way of handling stress, but do we handle it well? Practicing yoga and meditation daily (several times a week at least) will give you tools to help you manage your stress much easier. As you continue to practice, you will get better and better at it. Namaste.

Hi. I'm Renee Barnes-Orozco and I got started with practicing yoga to help me overcome major back pain and spasms. It is my desire to help others become more aware of how yoga can help them. Feel free to visit my blog at http://peacefulyoga.club/blog Be sure to check out my yoga mats there that will help make it more comfortable to practice on the floor.

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