Yoga Blocks, What Are They Good For?
You’ll remember to put your yoga blocks in your yoga bag once you’ve discovered their many benefits to your practice. But, before we list the many uses of yoga blocks, it’s a smart idea to review a bit about the benefits of Yoga, itself.
What Yoga Practice Can Do for You
Yoga practitioners have found that consistent yoga practice awakens both mind and body! Yoga practice involves unburdening your mind and becoming totally aware of each pose. This enhances inner awareness. Your “outer body” benefits as each pose nourishes, energizes, and revitalizes every cell, fiber, and tissue as a result of enhanced breathing, flexibility, strength and alignment. The goal of yoga practice is to create a union between the body, mind and spirit.
Patience is not only a virtue, it is the “key” to mastering a yoga pose, particularly when combined with ample time and commitment. No one is a master the first time they attempt to do anything. But, slowly over time, as you practice and try to perform each pose perfectly, without pushing yourself too far physically or beating yourself up mentally, you will notice that you are developing flexibility, strength, and energy physically and feeling more peaceful and clear mentally.
Try to create an uncluttered, graceful space for your yoga practice, with a bare floor, if you can, and a clear wall. Avoid distractions, such as cell phones, during your yoga practice. Ideally, you should not eat for at least 2 hours before practicing. If this is not possible, then try to eat something light, such as a piece of fruit, but no more than 1 hour before you start your yoga practice.
Always be mindful with your movements, and if you encounter pain or discomfort as you undertake a pose, pause or stop, and then try again.
Yoga props and accessories, such as yoga mats, yoga bolsters, yoga straps, yoga blocks, yoga mat bags, and even a yoga towel are designed to assist you in moving deeper into a pose, in performing an impeccable pose, and in practicing in a sound way.
Good reasons to consider using yoga props:
- Pain relief and body comfort
- Prevent injury
- Stress relief and relaxation
- Encourage appropriate alignment
- Ease and flexibility of movement
- Open up the joints
- Deepen awareness, development mindfulness
Yoga Blocks
Unfortunately, often before a beginner can start to experience the benefits to mind and body that yoga affords, discomfort in attempting to do a few of the yoga poses will make them turn away from a beneficial yoga practice. Yoga blocks can help anyone, but especially beginners, to feel more relaxed during yoga practice because yoga blocks aid to improve alignment. For example, when a standing pose entails one hand being on the floor, flexibility issues arise. In other words, the floor can look like it’s a long way down for a beginner. Think of a yoga block as an extra extension to your arm. By placing your hand on the block, you will be able to do the standing poses correctly while you are in the process of developing your flexibility. A yoga block is a wonderful transitional aid. In addition, some sitting poses make use of a yoga block. Yoga blocks aid with balance, poise, and stability. Who could ask for more from something so “square.”
Yoga blocks come in a fairly wide range of materials. Here are three: Foam blocks are durable and lightweight, an manageable add to your yoga mat bag! Wooden blocks are also light and hollow, yet essentially indestructible (even Fido would find one hard to destroy!). Finally, there is the environmentally friendly cork block. An added bonus is that the natural texture of the cork gives a little extra traction.
Yoga blocks are generally sold separately but, for adaptability, you’ll probably want to buy several.
Practicing Yoga
Yoga has been around for ages. It is composed of age old principles that correlate with the connection between a person’s mind and body. The importance and benefits of practicing yoga exercises for health have now been researched and proved by modern medical sciences. Yoga is a short word, or can be said to be a nick name for the old word “Yogasana”. It is an exercise that involves the body, mind and spirit of the practioner. People practicing and doing Yoga are known as Yogis. In order to fully reap of the rewards of practicing yoga exercises, one should believe that it will indeed benefit him, as it is an exercise strongly connected with the mind.
Practitioners believe that yoga is a therapeutic exercise that brings about peace of mind while it brings stability to the body. So, people practice yoga to feel fit and relax their minds of stress, depression and tension. Yoga is concerned with movements, patterns, postures and alignment of the human body. Different yoga postures can be performed and practiced by people of all ages but it is recommended for beginners to practice Yoga under the supervision of experts.
Types of Yoga postures
There are many types of yoga postures. Some of the more well-known postures are discussed as follows:
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Sukhasana or Lotus is a sitting pose of yoga and is easy to perform. It is often used as the starting position. It opens the hips, lower back and groin area.
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Tadasana or Mountain pose is used to improve the balance of mind and posture of the body.
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Virabhadrasana or Warrior is a yoga pose that can be performed after Tadasana or mountain pose. It helps to stretch legs and arms and provides strength to the bones, thus increasing the balance of the body.
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Uttanasana is a yoga posture in which the body is extended upwards and then bent in the forward position to touch the toes. It helps in stretching the neck, legs and back bones, while also provide relaxation to the heart and mind.
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Adho Mukha Svanasana or Downward Facing Dog is a yoga posture performed by putting and maintaining forehead on the floor in front of you. It helps in stretching and increasing the flexibility the back bone and hamstrings.
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Bhujangasana or The Cobra posture is performed by laying down flat on your stomach on the floor. It opens the area around the chest and heart as well as strengthens and stretches the spine, legs, and arms.
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Janu Shirshasana is head to knee pose of yoga exercises. This position is performed while sitting and touching the foot with the hand. Increases flexibility in the hamstrings, back, and arms.
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Trikonasana or the Triangle is a yoga pose in which the body is bent in the form of a triangle by separating the feet 3-4 feet and then touching one foot with one of your hands. It opens up the torso and increases the flexibility in back bone.
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Ardha Sarvangasana or Half Shoulderstand is a yoga pose that is formed by lying down on your back with elbows and lower arms on the floor and rise you legs up in the air. It helps improve thyroid function as well as circulation. It also provides strength to abdomen muscles and organs and provides stretch to upper back bone.
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Sethu Bandhasa or the Bridge is that yoga posture in which the body is laying down on the floor with arms resting at its sides while the body is risen such that the head, neck and feet are on the floor but the middle part of the body including tail, tail bone and spine is raised in the shape of an arc. It helps with the opening of the chest and low back and abdominal strength and flexibility.
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Hatha Yoga is the most difficult and demanding type of yoga postures as it requires very hard exercises and practices, immensely involving every muscles of the body.
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Pranayama is a yoga posture that involves breathing exercises.
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Dog and Cat posture helps in increasing the strength and flexibility of spinal cord.
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Savasana or the Corpse posture is performed at the end of yoga exercises session to relax the body and also provides a refreshing effect on the mind. It is an easy pose to perform.
Benefits of practicing yoga
There are literally hundreds of yoga benefits. Some of them are listed below:
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Fortifies the immune system and increases the body’s natural healing ability.
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It helps in relaxing the mind and increases its steadiness and ability to concentrate and perception.
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It improves the body’s overall flexibility.
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It improves memory and learning.
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It promotes cardiovascular health.
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It helps to stabilize the nervous system.
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It decreases the pulse rate thus decreasing the blood pressure.
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It activates the somatic cells of the brain and helps people in increasing awareness.
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It helps in normalizing the gastrointestinal and endocrine glands’ functionality.
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It raises the body’s energy level and equilibrium.
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For some people it helps in controlling their weight.
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Yoga boosts the balancing efficiency of the body.
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Helps overcome depression and anxiety.
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Helps lower cholesterol.
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It helps in controlling diabetes.
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It tunes and tones the muscles.
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Is helpful in the treatment of asthma, chronic fatigue, arteriosclerosis, hepatitis and many more condtions.
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Practicing yoga can help to slow down the aging process.
Benefits of Yoga - Both Emotional and Physical
The art of yoga has been mainly designed to focus on the total wellness of an individual. When a person gets involved with yoga they will certainly learn new types of lifestyle ideas as well as new ways of approaching life within the world. Yoga has the ability to improve your health in numerous different ways.
In addition, you will also increase your level of strength as well as become more flexible, improve your balance as well as educating yourself to release your stress and add to your vitality. Yoga can also be a pleasant way to lose weight.
Through the practice of the numerous yoga positions, better known as asanas, heightens your flexibility through working on your joints as well as your muscles, ligaments and tendons. You will begin to notice a substantial improvement in how flexible your body will become as you persist in your practice of yoga. You will be pleasantly surprised with the benefits of yoga for instance the increased muscle tone and the lowering of body fat.
Yoga is great for completely messaging your internal organs as well as the glands of your upper body which includes those that infrequently get stimulation needed. Through the use of messaging your organs as well as your glands yoga assists your bodies defenses to resist diseases from harming your health.
A substantial benefit of doing yoga is the added blood flow that happens throughout your physical body which adds to the strength of your health. The added flow of blood substantially helps your body’s natural ability to lower toxin substances as well as delivers added nourishments through your body.
Yoga for the Mind
One of the most profound benefits of yoga that happens is the capability of putting your internal mind as well as your body into a state of harmony, mainly through the use of meditation. Meditation gives you the ability to clear your inner mind and provides much needed inner peace. The meditation aspect of yoga can assist in taking away stress that is unhealthy from both your body and your mind. There are negative aspects of stress that effects your endocrinal, emotional as well as physical systems.
Yoga has been utilized to treat many different ailments. Some of these are; depression, headaches, backaches, assorted addictions, constipation, high blood pressure, indigestion problems, obesity as well as other types of health problems.
Various studies have demonstrated that the advantages of practicing yoga include providing people with the means to have a degree of control over an assortment of body functions such as the temperature of their body, the level of their blood pressure, their internal heart rate, brain waves, their metabolism rate as well as their respiratory function.
Lowering The Level Of Pain
An added advantage of doing the practice of yoga is yoga’s capability of assisting in the reduction of pain and by helping a persons brain to regulate a significant mechanism that is located in their spinal cord and by augmenting the production and release of pain reducing substances that are made within your body. The routines that yoga uses for breathing also can furnishes much welcomed pain relief.
If you have back pain which clearly nobody wants then first check with your physician to learn if yoga may be appropriate for your personal situation. Yoga has been demonstrated to help relieve back pain through improving your flexibility as well as your strength. By practicing yoga on a consistent basis you will end up in good physical shape and you will also end up appreciating the physical as well as the emotional advantages of yoga.
To learn more go to Benefits Of Yoga advice and at History Of Kriya Yoga tips.
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