It's time to pull out your yoga mat and learn the blend of mental and physical exercises that have fascinated yoga practitioners across the globe for thousands of years. The advantage about yoga is that to enjoy the rewards, you don't need to be a yogi or yogini. If you're young or old, obese or fit, yoga has the potential to relax your mind and make your body stronger. Do not be confused by the terminology of yoga, trendy yoga studios and complex poses. Yoga's to everybody.
These ten poses represent a complete yoga workout. Go through each pose slowly, and try to relax as you go. You find it difficult to pause after any pose, particularly if you are out of breath, and then start again when your breathing returns to normal. The aim is to keep a few, slow breaths for each pose before going on to the next.
1) Child's Pose
This relaxing pose reflects a successful pause position by nature. Before moving on to your next pose, you can use the child pose to relax and refocus. It gently stretches your lower spine, hips, thighs, ankles and knees and relaxes the back, shoulders and neck.
2) Downward-Facing Dog
Downward-facing dog strengthens your arms, shoulders and back while stretching out your feet's hamstrings, calves and arches. This will help to relieve back pain, too.
3) Plank Pose
A widely seen exercise, the plank allows the neck, shoulders, arms and legs to build strength.
4) Four-Limbed Staff Pose
This push-up variant follows plank posture in a rising sequence of yoga known as the salutation of the sun. If you eventually want to work on more advanced poses, such as arm balances or inversions, it is a good pose to learn.
5) Cobra Pose
This back-bending posture will help strengthen muscles in the back, improve flexibility in the spinal cord and stretch the arms, shoulders and abdomen.
6) Tree Pose
It can also strengthen your neck, knees, calves, thighs and spine, in addition to helping improve your balance.
7) Triangle Pose
Triangle, which is a part of several sequences of yoga, helps to develop strength in the legs and includes the thighs, back, arms, shoulders, groins, hamstrings and calves. This can also help increase strength in the neck and thighs.
8) Seated Half-Spinal Twist Pose
This twisting pose will make your back more flexible, thus stretching your arms, hips and chest. It can also help to alleviate stress in your back centre.
9) Bridge Pose
It is a back-bending pose which stretches chest, back and neck muscles. This also develops strength in the muscles behind it and hamstring.
10) Corpse Pose
Typically, as with life, yoga classes end with this pose. This makes for a moment of relaxation but in this posture some people find it hard to sit still. The more you practice this posture, though, the easier it will be to sink into a calming, meditative state.
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