How To Strengthen And Tone Your Muscles With Yoga
May 12, 2009
Strong, well-toned muscles are one of yoga’s best benefits. Most yoga exercises focus specifically on this goal.
Yoga exercises are called asanas. Some are simple, but they are the basis for more advanced postures. It’s essential that the basic postures be mastered before moving on to the more advanced asanas.
As with all exercise, warm up your muscles before you start into your fitness routine, and then complete your regimen with cooling-down exercises. Good warm-up exercises include walking easily around the room, lifting and relaxing your shoulders, moving your arms in gentle circles backward and forward, moving your eyes and rolling your head gently back and forth.
Once you feel warmed-up, it’s wise to start with easier poses and move on to more strenuous ones. For instance, the Cat posture is a good first asana after warm-up, because it will continue to stretch your muscles. Another good stretching pose is the Seated Forward bend, which elongates your shoulders, back and hamstrings.
Strengthening postures include the Backward Dog, the Hero pose and the Warrior asana. The Half Spinal Twist is a yoga pose that helps to strengthen the spine.
A qualified yoga instructor can recommend other poses that will improve balance, coordination and large motor ability. A good teacher also will know which postures will help to heal certain injuries. One of yoga’s major benefits is to relieve stress by focusing on breathing to bring inner calm and release tension.
Breathing exercises known as Pranayamas emphasize breath control and frequently involve holding your breath. Some are meant to increase energy, while others are mean for cooling the body.
In all cases, it’s important to do asanas before performing pranayamas, because certain of the breathing exercises can temporarily deprive muscles of the oxygen they need to function well.
A daily yoga routine should include a variety of poses intended for different body areas along with improving breathing. Among current yoga practices is a new technique called ball yoga. This involves the use of an exercise ball to perform yoga positions.
Exercise balls come in different sizes. Taller adults, over five-feet, seven inches, should use a 65cm ball. People of smaller stature can use a 55cm ball. In the beginning, the ball (of any size) should be filled with less air so that it has more “give” when doing postures with it. Adding more air later will increase the physical challenge of performing yoga with a ball.
While easy to get started, it’s clear that yoga is a fitness regimen that requires good instruction for beginners. Getting off to a good start by learning from an experienced teacher will make yoga more beneficial and fun.
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