Employees sit at the desk for close to 40 hours a week. With the onset of distance learning, students are crouched on their laptops for a long time. Maybe people, in general, haven’t particularly mastered the art of good posture. Because of this, they may experience back pain in the middle or at the end of the day.
Chronic pain can also result from a prior injury. There are certain accidents that cause pain even after people have recovered. This poses inconveniences in everyday life because it hinders the person from performing basic tasks.
Whether the pain comes from lifestyle choices or from an accident, the magic of yoga is highly beneficial. Yoga exercises mindfulness–the awareness of the self, how it feels, and listening to its needs. It also strengthens the muscles, increases flexibility, and endurance. Through the power of stretching the muscles, yoga relieves tension in the muscles that often cause injury and pain.
Athletes
Although most athletes need moving around and specified training, they can benefit from yoga every once in a while. They can do yoga on their active rest days to fully stretch their muscles to promote muscle recovery. This is because stretching increases blood flow into a specific part of the body and promotes better oxygen flow.
For athletes that are in sports injury treatment, they can stay active by doing light yoga positions, depending on the location of their injury. In yoga, going gentle and at your own pace is encouraged, so the injured athlete will not feel any pressure to keep up with the pace or exert too much pressure.
Employees
Yoga in the workplace is not only for the physical health of the employees but also for their mental health. Jobs can be the number one stressor in people’s lives. Being too stressed at work can cause burnout, affecting the productivity of the employee as well as all the other aspects of their life.
This is why more and more workplaces are integrating yoga into the programs. The one thing that is emphasized in yoga is the feeling of relaxation. Let go of all your burdens, focus on your breathing, and let the peace consume your head. In yoga, people are weeding their stresses. Hence, yoga is an effective tool to handle stress and inhibit it because it reduces cortisol levels.
People, in General
It may be fun to stay on the couch or in bed all day, scrolling on the phone and watching TV, but it’s not good for the health. An inactive lifestyle causes several long-term diseases that are easily preventable. It could lead to obesity, high blood pressure, heart diseases, diabetes, etc.
There are people who don’t like exercise because it’s an overall uncomfortable task. However, there are forms of activity that are enjoyable or doesn’t involve strenuous activities. One of them is yoga. Yoga is convenient because all you need is a mat. It’s also easy to follow YouTube videos on yoga flows, and they’ve already prepared for various purposes.
Yoga for Beginners
It’s not difficult to start doing yoga. A beginner could feel a little shaking in their muscles while holding poses, but it’s manageable. Most likely, if the pose is uncomfortable, the yogi only needs to correct their form.
- Start with standing tall, feet flat on the floor, or the cross-legged sitting position on the mat. Make sure that your back and your neck are straight. From here, exercise breathing exercises before proceeding to stretches.
- The stretches can be the ones that gym instructors and sports trainers use for stretching exercises. Expect, though, that there will be variation in yoga. Don’t worry, you’ll be surprised by how much more stretch the variations can give you.
- Learn basic yoga positions. The Child’s Pose is a stretch for the neck, spine, and hips. The downward-facing dog is good for relieving back pains and for stretching the hamstrings. The cobra pose is where a yogi might hear their backs cracking, but it strengthens the back muscles as well as stretch the abdomen.
- Relax. This is one of the most important parts of yoga. It’s about awareness of oneself. There are others who practice yoga while doing a body check. This means that they tune in to every part of their body from one point to another so that they can pay attention to what the body part feels.
Yoga is easy to begin and to maintain. It’s something that doesn’t require running an entire lap or carrying weights twice a person’s weight. All it needs is some free time and a mat.
