Search:

Modern Stress Relief: Try Ancient Yoga

By: Kim Archer Many of us in modern life today are under stress all the time. However, we still have to stay in control. If this goes on for a long time, we can react to stress with unhealthy eating habits, release of more stress hormones, and even by manifesting cardiac risk factors. However, there is a way to reduce these risk factors and even reverse them without turning to prescription drugs. All it takes is some discipline and to develop some habits over your lifetime that will work in tandem with your ordinary diet and exercise programs.

Yoga can help you regain the state you want your mind and body to be in. It will help you relax.

Yoga is one of the most well-known forms of meditative exercise within the rising movement of mind-body health. Other forms include qigong, tai chi, and various practices of meditation. Mind-body fitness comes from Eastern philosophies and religions and can enhance both your emotional and physical health.

Mind-body exercise has many benefits, which are showing themselves to be authentic even under scientific study. Indeed, mind-body exercise can accomplish a number of things, such as lowering your risk of heart disease and boosting your mood.

The kinder, gentler movements typical of yoga improve flexibility, strength and muscle tone and can be more youth-promoting than the wear-and-tear of daily aerobics, weights and running alone.

Indeed, practicing yoga can impact every part of your existence. Most modern Western practitioners, for example, focus on the physical asanas, or positions. However, many others utilize yoga as a path to bliss and live their lives in its all-encompassing embrace.

Yoga certainly can be an ambitious undertaking, but in reality practicing it is amazingly easy and you can do it just about anywhere. If you utilize yoga to its full potential, you can incorporate its meditative and dietary practices as well as its code of ethics into your life. Usually, however, it's practiced as a mixture of asanas, meditation and breathing exercises, also called pranayama.

Entire books have been written on yoga breathing. Deep breathing is both calming and energizing. The energy you feel from a few minutes of careful breathing is not nervous or hyper, but that calm, steady energy we all need.

If you're feeling particularly stressed, try this five-minute "breath break" to energize yourself and release stress. Read through the instructions several times before you actually try following the steps.

1. Sit with your spine as straight as possible. Use a chair if necessary but don't slump into it. Feet flat on the floor with knees directly over the center of your feet. Use a book or cushion under your feet if they do not rest comfortably on the floor. Hands are on the tops of your legs.

2. Close your eyes and simply rest them.

3. Picture your ribs at the back, front and sides of your body. Your lungs reside behind your ribs.

4. Slowly breathe in, filling up your lungs from the bottom. Visualize your ribs expanding out and up. Now, slowly breathe out, with your lungs emptying from top to bottom and your ribs gently contracting back down and in. Don't push the breath out.

5. When you first do this, do it for two or three minutes. As you become more practiced, do it for 5 or 10 minutes. When you first begin, set aside a time once per day to do this. As you become more accustomed to it and realize how good it makes you feel, you'll want to practice it throughout your day at various times.

Article Source: http://www.lifeweightloss.com

Kim Archer enjoys the health benefits and relaxation of yoga. A great source of information on this restorative practice can be found at Yoga Essentials.

Please Rate this Article

Not yet Rated