Yoga, Health, and Wellness Articles + Recipes

Getting up and on the yoga mat regularly is great for your health and mind, but if you work at a busy desk job, your regular practice still might not be enough to combat the stress and pressure you are putting on your body - and your posture! However, there are many ways to alleviate this pressure, but the easiest ones don’t even involve getting up from your chair - perfect for those days when you’ve just got too much work to do. There are many yoga poses you can practice at your desk, and we’ve put together some of the best to help the areas that get the most strain sitting down, to reduce back pain, posture issues and stress. Seated Crescent Moon

Excellent posture not only keeps your physical body healthy, but also provides the foundation and support you need to maintain emotional and mental balance. Yoga will help you find proper spinal alignment to stand tall and feel your best inside and out. Over the last thirty years, we’ve grown more sedentary as a culture. Many of us spend hours each day sitting, which is the number one contributor to back pain, poor posture, sluggish digestion, and mental fog. To counteract hunched shoulders, tight neck muscles, and lower back pain, take the time to step onto your yoga mat and perfect your posture.

If someone asked you what the biggest benefit of yoga for your upper body is, how would you answer? Would you say that all the Down Dogs and chataranguas gave you muscular endurance and strength? That your chest and shoulders are more open and your posture is excellent? Would you mention how your spine is protected because you’ve built up a girdle of mobile muscle to keep you safe from injury? Or perhaps you’d expand beyond the obvious physical benefits. You could share how you are now a person able to live from a place of compassion, speak your authentic truth, trust your intuition, and visualize Samadhi or enlightenment because you’ve balanced your heart, throat, third-eye, and crown chakras. Yoga’s benefits are infinite and whatever your answer, you’d be correct. The fruits of a well-rounded yoga practice encompass the physical benefits for your muscular, spinal, nervous, and digestive systems.

Do you know where you hold your stress? Chances are the majority of people reading this hold stress in their upper body or have at one point. And if you don’t hold stress in your upper body, are you aware of all the pressure put on it from the modern day society we live in? Think about what slouching over in a desk all day or sitting at home on the computer can do to your upper body, specifically your posture. Not only do these things wreak havoc on your posture, they also can contribute to overall tightness and pain. Eventually down the road, muscular imbalances in the upper body may even start to occur. Our bodies are made for physical activity and being stationery for a long period of time with unnatural movements can take a real toll. Even spending lots of time in the texting pose (which is definitely not a yoga pose!) can cause problems to the upper body. How To Tell If You Have Good Posture When it comes to having a strong and healthy upper body, good posture is key.