Multiyork
We recently teamed up with London’s Special Yoga to gather some great poses together that we can all do from the comfort of our own homes. If you’re not familiar with Special Yoga, they specialise in delivering yoga as a therapeutic treatment in the special needs community and offer training programs for yoga teachers, parents and pediatric professionals to enable them to reach out to and help even more children with disabilities.
Special Yoga showed us that you can enjoy some yoga poses from the comfort of your own, sofa! With yoga’s credentials as a gentle form of exercise that can calm the mind and improve your wellbeing, where better to do it than your sofa… the place in the home where we most often go to unwind after a busy day.
Starting with a gentle warm up in the Siddhasana position you can become aware of any tension in your body, particularly in the shoulders and jaw. Take a nice deep breath in and out as you feel yourself sinking into the sofa. You can do this for a few minutes until you feel truly calm and ready to move on to the other suggested poses. This exercise also works on it’s own as a meditative exercise to help quiet the mind.
Yoga is about feeling a nice stretch, breathing naturally, working with rather than against your body and letting go of tension, so when trying out the poses, only stretch as far as feels nice and for as long as feels comfortable. Stop immediately if you feel any pain. Keep checking your body to make sure you aren’t screwing up your face, hunching your shoulders or holding your breath. Repeat poses a number of times and you may find your flexibility increases with each try, particularly as you exhale in each position! It certainly will if practiced regularly over weeks and years.
Once you’re familiar with these poses, you’ll always have them available to draw on after a long day at work. They can act as a great way to switch off and loosen up before snuggling up to watch your favourite programme and of course for the more ambitious amongst you, over time yoga can make your body strong, supple and able to perform some amazing feats!
Create the right mood prior to your Yoga session. You need a quiet and peaceful setting to practice in with ample space to stretch out. Dim the lights, use soft music and rid your space of any distractions. The phone ringing, music blaring and children interrupting you might not get you in the right frame of mind for calming, relaxing beneficial yoga.
You can also practice Yoga whilst seated in a chair. For more details and for 6 benefits of Chair Yoga + 8 new poses sitting down to help with mobility problems visit http://www.doyouyoga.com/6-benefits-of-chair-yoga-8-poses-to-get-you-started/
Read more at http://www.multiyork.co.uk/blog/september-2014/yoga-at-home#I64grmGkmfhBEb3v.99
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