Living in this fast-paced and highly-competitive world is no mean feat. In the race of staying ahead of your competitor, often we are plagued with stress and anxiety, both of which can not only take a toll on our mental health but on our overall personality as well.

Whether you are a young adult student or a housewife, whether you are the corporate manager of a well-established firm or a senior citizen looking ways to spend his or her free time after retirement, stress and anxiety can propel in anyone and everyone.  These issues can carve a void in your head that will simply diminish your ability to excel in life. Thus, it is crucial to fight them off at an early stage with some self-help; and what better way to kick them off other than doing some relaxing yoga from the comfort of your home?

Benefits of Yoga in Fighting off Stress and Anxiety

Yoga helps in curbing stress and anxiety by helping you relax. It makes you present in each pose, thereby increasing your concentration and power of control over yourself.  This eliminates any negative mental chatter that is bothering you, thereby elevating your overall mood.

It has established by multiple types of researches that just devoting a few minutes of your day to yoga can have major positive impacts on your life.

Yoga is not just a stress reliever. It can pave the way for easing out anxiety, and even depression.  When you are performing yoga, your attention and focus are transferred to your breath and body. As a result, physical tension is released and anxiety is tampered down. In fact, yoga can also help us in getting good sleep.

We understand that getting into the calm-cool-composed mindset of yoga can’t be mastered in a single day. Take your time! Slowly and steadily, you will get there. You have to permit yourself to fail. Don’t aim for perfection.  Just accept yourself and all your essence.

6 Best Yoga Poses for Removing Stress and Anxiety

Millions of people across the globe suffer from anxiety, making it one of the most common mental illnesses. Today, we are listing out a couple of yoga poses for removing this mental health issue from your life.

However, don’t think that these poses are only for those who have been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. The truth of the matter is that most of us don’t get our mental health checked. So, you never know whether you are already suffering from excess stress, anxiety, hypertension, among others, or not. It is better to take precautions than cure.

Our bodies can heal and function effectively on its own, but the numerous stressors in our life can slow down, and sometimes even stop this natural healing process. Through the help of the following yoga poses, you can dissolve these stressors from blocking your body’s natural healing system.

Yoga not only provides us physical benefits but mental benefits as well. Here’s presenting the yoga poses you need to try to get rid of stress and anxiety:

Child’s Pose

The child’s pose helps relax your stress and fatigue level. It focuses on your hamstrings, rotator muscles, gluteus maximus, and spinal extensors.  

To get into this pose, your first have to sit on your knees and sink back onto your heels. Follow this by bending forward while keeping your arms forward. You can also choose to keep the arms by your side if that suits you. Rest your torso on your thighs and your forehead on the ground. Try holding this pose for around five minutes.

This pose is extremely comforting and has soothing effects on the human mind.

Fish Pose

Sitting in front of the computer wreaks havoc to your posture, and in turn, your mood. Fish pose yoga helps in providing relief to all the tightness in your back and chest. It takes care of your abdominals, hip flexors, intercostal muscles, and trapezius.

To try this, you need to sit down with your legs stretched out in front of you. After that, put your hands beneath your butt. Make sure you keep your palms facing down.  Next, you need to squeeze your elbows together and expand your chest.  

Proceed to lean back onto your elbows and forearms. Stay lifted in your chest by pressing into your arms. If it suits you, hang your head back towards the floor. If you find this too uncomfortable, you can even use a cushion to rest your head. Hold this pose for a minute.

Triangle Pose

The triangle yoga pose works to ease out the tension from your neck and back by focusing on a bunch of different areas in your body such as the hamstrings, internal oblique, quadriceps, gluteus maximus and medius, and latissimus dorsi.

To get into this pose, stand with your feet more apart from one another than your hips. Keep your left toes forward while keeping your right toes at a slight angle. Then, raise your arms and ensure that your palms are faced down.

Next, try to reach forward with your left hand and as you do so, put your torso forward as well. Proceed to bring your right hip back by hinging at your hip joint. Put your left hand to your leg or the floor while extending your right arm towards the ceiling. Feel free to gaze at whichever direction is comfortable for you. Hold this pose for a minute.

Legs-up-the-Wall Pose

Next up on our list of yoga poses that you need to try to get rid of stress and anxiety is the up-the-wall yoga pose. This restorative pose is extremely beneficial since it completely relaxes your mind and body.

The areas that are taken care of through this pose are pelvic muscles, lower back, hamstrings, front torso, and neck. If you are a beginner, we recommend starting this pose by sitting beside a wall. Once you get a rhythm of it, you can do it without the help of a wall.

First of all, swing your legs up along the wall and lie back.  Ensure that your butt is close to the wall. Depending on your level of comfortability, you can either keep your butt a few inches away from the wall or stick it completely to the wall.

The main idea here is to soften and relax your neck, chest and back. Hold this pose for ten minutes and de-stress yourself.

Tree Pose

When it comes to shutting down all the fast-paced negative thoughts that keep on racing in your mind, none works better than the classic tree yoga pose.

Helping you focus inwards, this pose works on your abdominals, quadriceps, tibialis anterior, and psoas.

To get into this pose, stand up and slowly lift your right leg (you can use your left leg as well if that’s what you are comfortable in) off the floor. Next, turn your left leg’s sole towards the inside of your left leg. You then need to put it on the outside of your thigh, left ankle, or calf.

Please make sure that you don’t press your foot into your knee. Proceed to bring your hands in a prayer position. If it interferes with your ability to balance, then you can even hang your hands by your side like tree branches or in any other manner which is comfortable to you. Hold this position for two minutes and repeat on the opposite side.

Extended Puppy Pose

Next up is the half-moon pose which helps in relieving tension by lengthening and stretching the spine. It works in your erector spinae, trapezius, deltoids, and triceps.

To achieve this pose, extend your arms forward and push your butt down towards your heels. Then, engage your arms and press into your hands, all the while keeping your elbows lifted.

Proceed to put your forehead on the floor gently. Hold this pose for two minutes.

Final Thoughts

Don’t neglect your mental health. What may seem a simple case of anxiety can turn into something much more serious in the future. Remove the taboo of mental health check-ups and meanwhile allow the soothing nature of yoga to take care of your stress and anxiety.

To get the full benefits of yoga, get yourself enrolled in a certified gym such as Starmark Fitness Studio, which is considered one of the best gyms in Kolkata. Talk to our yoga practitioners and learn from them which yoga pose is suited for you and how you can achieve maximum benefit from them. It is important to learn about your own body so that you can provide it the right treatment. Keep in mind the fact that when you have proper guidance, the road to healing becomes much more convenient.

So, de-stress yourself, remove all the negative vibes and energy from your body, and tackle tension and anxiety with yoga.