Looking for ways to beat stress? Yoga makes it easy. Even five minutes spent doing yoga will give stress relief.

In these tough times it’s only natural to feel stress. However constant unrelieved stress will lead to health problems. It’s vital that you spend some time each day getting rid of the stress hormones in your system and discovering relaxation.

Even if you are new to yoga, a few simple stretches will relieve your stress and improve your mood. This is a great gift you can give to yourself as well as to your loved ones.

New to yoga? The easiest way to learn yoga is to take a class at a yoga studio. However you can also learn basic yoga from an instructional CD or DVD, or even a book.

When you’re using yoga to relieve stress, it’s vital that you don’t get hung up on your technique. With yoga it’s not important how perfectly you perform an exercise, but that you focus on your body rather than on the thoughts whizzing around in your brain.

Here are two easy yoga exercises which will help you to relieve stress.

1. Downward Facing Dog Pose – Calms Your Mind and Relieves Mild Depression or Agitation

If you own a dog you know where the name of this exercise comes from. Each time your dog gets up from a rest he takes pleasure in this luxurious stretch — you can do the same thing.

Begin this pose on your hands and knees and then lift your knees from the floor. Straighten your knees but don’t lock them and lift your tailbone towards the ceiling.

Maintain the pose for several breaths, or even longer. You can stay in this pose for up to five minutes if it feels comfortable.

2. Seated Forward Bend: also Calms Your Mind and Relieves Mild Depression or Agitation

In Seated Forward Bend, you fold your body up like clothes pin.

Sit on the floor with your legs straight. Take a deep breath and bend forward from your hips, reaching out to hold your toes, and then folding your body on to your legs if you can. Don’t strain to do the exercise – just stretch as far as is comfortable – and BREATHE.

Maintain the pose for several breaths or even for up to five minutes if you wish.

The above two exercises are a great way to relieve stress. You can do them at any time of the day or evening, even in the office. Just close your office door.

Enrich your life with yoga today

Read Yoga for the New You and discover everything you need to create a yoga practice right in your own home. Transform your life with yoga.

[tags]stress relief,yoga,yoga poses,yoga positions,yoga exercises[/tags]

Want to lose weight the easy way? Yoga is a perfect solution for weight loss, and no, you don’t need to tie yourself up like a pretzel to do it.

Many yoga studios offer special classes for people who want to shed a few pounds. If no special Weight Loss Yoga classes are available in your area, any beginners class will be suitable, in forms like Hatha and Bikram Yoga.

As with any exercise routine, see your doctor first. Yoga is perfectly safe, but your instructor will want to know if you have challenges like high blood pressure, arthritis, or weak knees.

When you go to a yoga studio for the first time, tell the instructor what your health challenges are, and she or he will offer modified poses for you during class.

How Yoga Helps You to Lose Weight

Unlike other forms of exercise, yoga isn’t primarily an exercise routine; it’s a way of achieving balance by uniting your mind and body with your spirit. The word “yoga” comes from a Sanskrit word meaning, “to tie, unite, balance.”

So while the goal of any yoga practice isn’t explicitly to lose weight, this is one of the effects. Overweight is a sign that your system is out of balance, yoga brings it back into balance.

If you suspect that you’re overweight because you have emotional issues, yoga will help you resolve them. You don’t have to do anything special. As you practice, the poses releases deep emotions buried in your body’s tissues.

Many yoga practitioners find themselves spontaneously laughing, or weeping – this is just blocked energy releasing. Yoga is a great way to release stress.

Yoga Poses for Weight Loss

You can turn any of your favorite poses into a weight loss routine.

Here’s an example:

After a Sun Salutations warmup, go on to:

* A standing pose, like Warrior Pose; then

* A sitting pose, like Forward Bend; then

* A complementary pose like the Camel; and

* A Twist; and

* End with Corpse Post

Create your own routines, according to the time you have to spare. Just ten minutes twice a day will set you on the path to harmonious weight loss with yoga.

Enrich your life with yoga today

Read Yoga for the New You and discover everything you need to create a yoga practice right in your own home. Transform your life with yoga.

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[tags]yoga,weight loss,yoga poses,yoga positions,yoga exercises[/tags]

Savasana is a pose of total relaxation—making it one of the most challenging yoga asanas.

Benefits include:

Calms the brain and helps relieve stress and mild depression
Relaxes the body
Reduces headache, fatigue, and insomnia
Helps to lower blood pressure

In Savasana it’s essential that the body be placed in a neutral position. Sit on the floor with your knees bent, feet on the floor, and lean back onto your forearms. Lift your pelvis slightly off the floor and, with your hands, push the back of the pelvis toward the tailbone, then return the pelvis to the floor.

Inhale and slowly extend the right leg, then the left, pushing through the heels. Release both legs, softening the groins, and see that the legs are angled evenly relative to the mid-line of the torso, and that the feet turn out equally. You should narrow the front pelvis and soften (but don’t flatten) the lower back.

With your hands lift the base of the skull away from the back of the neck and release the back of the neck down toward the tailbone. If you have any difficulty doing this, support the back of the head and neck on a folded blanket. Broaden the base of the skull too, and lift the crease of the neck diagonally into the center of the head. Make sure your ears are equidistant from your shoulders.

Reach your arms toward the ceiling, perpendicular to the floor. Rock slightly from side to side and broaden the back ribs and the shoulder blades away from the spine. Then release the arms to the floor, angled evenly relative to the mid-line of torso.

Turn the arms outward and stretch them away from the space between the shoulder blades. Rest the backs of the hands on the floor as close as you comfortably can to the index finger knuckles. Make sure the shoulder blades are resting evenly on the floor. Imagine the lower tips of the shoulder blades are lifting diagonally into your back toward the top of the sternum. From here, spread the collarbones.

In addition to quieting the physical body in Savasana, it’s also necessary to pacify the sense organs. Soften the root of the tongue, the wings of the nose, the channels of the inner ears, and the skin of the forehead, especially around the bridge of the nose between the eyebrows. Let the eyes sink to the back of the head, then turn them downward to gaze at the heart. Release your brain to the back of the head.

Stay in this pose for 5 minutes for every 30 minutes of practice. To exit, first roll gently with an exhalation onto one side, preferably the right. Take 2 or 3 breaths. With another exhalation press your hands against the floor and lift your torso, dragging your head slowly after. The head should always come up last.

After completing these exercises, take a few moments to practice some deep meditation which is covered in the next section.

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[tags]yoga,yoga poses,yoga positions,yoga exercises[/tags]