Strike It Healthy with Your Yoga Poses

Strike It Healthy with Your Yoga Poses

There are numerous yoga poses in the various schools of the Yoga discipline, all hailing back to their original authors over thousands of years. You might ask yourself if some of these ancient postures are actually still utilized today.

The answer is a resounding yes. Yoga poses function and perform differently. They were developed from studied observation, insight and inspiration by yogis of the past with targeted purposes.

Here are some of the most fundamental yoga poses that are most commonly used today:

Standing Poses

Standing exercises are among the most important fundamental yoga poses. This type of pose aligns your body and your feet as a means to improve and maintain good posture. Without even realizing it, your posture improves via the spinal stretching and straightening functions within these yoga positions. Standing poses also serve to help strengthen your legs and increase the elasticity in your legs and hips.

Seated Poses

These series of poses manifest strength and suppleness. You will find your back strengthened and flexibiltiy return to your lower back and hips. Benefits are rendered to your knees, which become more supple, along with the groin, ankles and your all important backbone. An added benefit derived is an improved ability to breathe more deeply, which helps you relax and which fosters a deep, peaceful calm.

Forward Bends

Forward bends stretch the hamstrnigs and lower back, which in turn, strengthens them. This lessens the tension in your neck, shoulders and back and increases the flexibility of your spine. A wonderful calmness can also be achieved with these poses.

Back Bends

These bends open up your chest, hips and rib cage, which serve to strengthen arms and shoulders. Not surprisingly, you enjoy more flexibility and elasticity in your shoulders as a result. Tension is relieved along the front of your body to the hip region, and the spine benefits equally.

Remedial strengthening is often the aim of these poses, and many use yoga props to assist them in these vital regions. The spine and spinal cord benefit greatly from these postures, and the benefits derived are enjoyed by the integrated areas of chest, arms, shoulders, neck and surrounding areas. You may want to consider using a yoga strap or block to assist you in getting the most from your yoga moves.

Balance Poses

Balance poses are both challenging and fun. Balance poses are performed to improve posture. When posture is prime, the spine is elongated and more flexible, important to avoid falling injures. The ability to twist your spine from side to side helps maintain balance, something that elderly people often have trouble with. Stiffness hinders them from this important twisting action. Thus, they can lose balance, fall and suffer many serious injuries.

Twisting exercises are incorporated into this pose series, with careful attention given to both sides of the body and spine to achieve that all important balance.

Restoring balance improves posture, which elongates and flexes the spine, which puts us more in control of of our balance and enables us better to break a potential fall; -- all integrated perfection via simple yoga poses, still healing today, but developed by insightful, learned yogis of the past.

Balance exercises also serve to improve your ability to maintain focus --a very important part of your yoga discipline, and very important to daily activities in general. If we are unable to assert our ability to concentrate, many areas of simple living can suffer.

Learning to master the balance poses in your yoga sessions translate to improved balance in many other areas of your life, beyond the physical rewards.

Now you, too, have insight into the seemingly simplistic nature of these fundamental yoga postures. You can appreciate the ingenious methodology and integration of learned insight and focused observation that went into developing these amazingly effective, but outwardly simplistic-looking yoga poses.

But we don't even need to understand it...we just need to perform them with commitment regularly...and have fun!

When we hear the common phrase - 'the wisdom of the ages' - we may have a far deeper appreciation of what that really means, and be more appreciative of what has been gifted us by these ancient yogis.