Benefits of Yoga in today’s overstressed world

Life happens to all; humans experience it and notice it when it puts them through certain degree of physical, emotional, and psychological demands. Stress at times is welcomed despite of the challenges it brings, like pregnancy and parenthood and other times not so much, when it is related to career, person or material loss.

It’s not possible to avoid life but have to learn to live through its ‘ebbs’, manage these effectively so that it does not impact the state of mind, health and well being.

The tell-tale signs of stress or the impact stress can be stated as:

·       Spectrum of emotions ranging from depression to extreme anxiety.

·       Personality issues like insecurity/lack of confidence/substance abuse/social withdrawal.

·       Functional symptoms like fatigue.

·       Relationship problems.

All it takes to avoid this unfortunate whirlpool is to have a healthy routine. Permanent changes in an individual’s personality can happen from temporary events if their impression last longer than event itself. Yoga and mindfulness are best daily routine to avoid exactly that from happening. These help in doing emotional cleansing each day and provide with better control over negative thoughts and emotions.

Following few asana are particularly helpful in this regard:

Yoga asana together with Pranayama are amazing techniques to counter stress. Both go hand in hand, Pranayama helps you to control your breath, leading to perfect relaxation and balance of body activities. It liberates us from our age old practice of shallow breathing that we become programmed to since our early years; the more deeply you breathe the more relaxed and liberated you feel.

It works like hypnosis, transforming you, taking you from the world of stress to an altogether astral plane where you go in trance and feel lighter as gold flake. It lifts your soul and cleanses your energies.

Here are 3 Asana that together with Pranayama are good for distressing:

1. Balasana (Child Pose)

(Pic courtesy: Wikipedia)

Balasana is the most calming poses of all, with the simple pose resembling the serene posture of a child, it allows an opportunity to breathe fully, stretch to release tension with each breath, improves concentration and shut out unnecessary distractions.

2. Sukhasana (Easy Pose)

(Pic courtesy: www.taarago.com)

Excellent pose for inner calm, to find lost tranquillity by eliminating anxiety, besides relieving physical and mental exhaustion and tiredness, it works wonder in just few minutes.

3. Uttana Shishosana (Extended Puppy Pose)

(Pic courtesy: www.fitnessrepublic.com)

As innocent its name is in English equally potent it is in finding the inner strength by submitting feeling and emotions about thing we cannot control in our life. To practice this one has to try to touch the floor with the nose while starting from Balasana. This pose also relieves symptoms of chronic stress, tension, insomnia, physical stress like chronic back and shoulder tension.

These practices help to channelize life’s frustration and create a stable inner core that can overcome it all. Helps to harness something useful out of it, like electricity; it can kill but if channelized properly, same can bring light to the world.

Best possible way to achieve that is by ‘Yoga’.