Yoga: The long term investment
Start doing Yoga early on and continue long term similar to your financial investments. As believed by many, Yoga is not just for flexibility. It has many benefits like gaining strength, mental calmness, good sleep; healing depression, anxiety, diseases & injuries.
You need a lot of dedication to practice Yoga. Like any other exercises, you have to continue doing it forever to get the benefits.
Yoga can be done anywhere or anytime with very less or no instruments:
- Start your day by doing some stretches on the bed — Child’s pose, Pavanamuktasana(bend one leg at a time or both legs towards your chest), full body stretch with your hands above head, supine/reclined twist. Refer to https://www.prevention.com/fitness/g20490060/do-these-stretches-before-getting-out-of-bed/ for more such exercises.
- Being in IT job, we have to spend most of the time in front of laptop which ruins the body. Keep moving regularly, every hour. Either walk around or you can do easy stretches and twists right on your chair — https://www.verywellfit.com/chair-yoga-poses-3567189. E.g. Neck rotations, shoulder stretches, shoulder rotations, hand above head stretching etc.
- While watching your favourite series, sit on the floor and do some forward bends and twists at least for half an hour daily. In sitting postures like below :Vajrasana, Padamasana, Baddakonasana, Janu Sirsasana, Marichyasana, Upavistha Konasana, Paschimottanasana etc., twist your upper body to left and right to look behind. Bend forward to do forward bending. Try to keep the spine as straight as possible. Refer https://rumiearth.com/asana/ for understanding the benefits of these asanas.
- Sit on the floor to have your food — sukhasana.
- Do exercises like deep squat(malasana) and plank (full or elbow) regularly like once a day. Keep increasing the time duration every day like 30 secs, 1min, 2 mins.
- To get relief from menstrual cramps, do these — Baddakonasana, Upavistha Konasana, Supta Baddakonasana(with bolster if possible like below image, where the bolster is supporting the head & back). Check out https://www.verywellhealth.com/yoga-poses-for-your-period-3567221. Make sure you do not do any rigorous exercises like inversions, jumping exercises or heavy weight lifting. Pamper yourself during these days and do resting poses using a bolster.
India has some great Yoga teachers, make the most of it and follow a teacher. This way, you are motivated and don’t end up injuring yourself by doing the wrong things. Don’t do complex asanas and breathing exercises on your own. This will do more harm than good. Doing normal breathing during exercise is very crucial. Take it slow, it’s not a competition. With regular practice, you can easily do cool pose like below.
I am lucky to have found my teacher — Gulnaz Dashti. She has been learning from the B.K.S. Iyengar family and teaching for many years. She teaches with a lot of dedication, patience and gives individual attention. Her online classes have helped a lot in keeping sane and healthy during this pandemic. You can register on yoganjali.in if interested.
Happy Yoga, keep practising and stay healthy mentally and physically!
