Mojo’s Yoga

Fighting Anxiety with Yoga

Anxiety appears in many forms. It disturbs those who suffer from its numerous forms. These forms include generalized anxiety and acute anxiety disorder. Anxiety creates feelings of defeat, anger, panic, constant fear, low self-esteem and limited control.

People want to avoid anxiety. Yet for others it is a constant struggle, leading them to try drugs to treat it, hoping for release from its powerful clutches. Practicing yoga is a great way to take the challenge of anxiety head on, subduing it effects. Here’s two yoga poses you can do to help ease anxiety.

Child’s Pose

Child’s Pose is a resting pose in yoga. Many people use it as a way to relax between performing more challenging poses during a yoga session. It can imbue its performer with comfort, helping to ease the symptoms of anxiety. This pose releases tension locked up in the shoulders, neck and back, the places where many people hold great stress. It promotes relaxation, encouraging you to take conscious deep breaths. Deep breathing is wonderful for those who suffer from anxiety, calming one’s nervous system. Continue reading

Beginning Yoga

A huge deterrent to getting into fitness and the routine of it is that it seems like a pretty daunting task. It seems like you need a lot of prior knowledge for a lot of it before you get into. What diet balances you should have, what equipment you need, what sort of work out you need to do, do you want to build muscle, lose fat? You might need to consult a few other people, maybe even join a gym. Why I would put myself through so much, I’m just happy being myself, you think as you spend another day at home.

Yoga for Fitness

The great thing about Yoga is that it can be done anywhere, anytime with very little equipment, usually just baggy clothes (you already have that covered!) and a non-slip mat to begin.

Other than that you just need patience and an open mind. You can’t go into yoga without even a little determination. With the right attitude, you’ll start seeing results right away.

Your First Poses

You can’t go into yoga without rocking out a few of the basic poses, The basic poses will help you get into the flow of things and will help you become more flexible for the later, more demanding ones. Here are a few poses to get you going: Continue reading

Benefits of Yoga for Runners

Yoga and Running may seem like opposite ends of the fitness spectrum, but one shouldn’t disregard the other just because they might not seem alike. In truth, they might actually be more effective on the other than you hoped.

Running and Yoga

Running is a balancing act. You might think, I walk and run every day and rarely do I ever fall on the back, how is it a balancing act? Well, have you ever complained about back backs, knees, tight hamstrings or sore feet? You might think it just a given that comes with running, but really it isn’t.

The pain you experience because of running is a result of bad form and imbalances during running. If you bring your body through a practice that is dedicated to balance and form, you’ll see that it greatly affects your day to day activities, not just running. A good fitness model is one that is based on the combination of strength and flexibility.

Yoga Helps Reduce Physical Stress

Runners are obviously a lot more in form and structure with their physique while running, but post runs they might even anticipate the pain they might experience. Not having the proper balance can lead to chronic pain and even injury.

The body needs an opposing movement to the pounding, tightening and shortening movements that runners experience. There is an instability that is created when you’re focusing on just a few muscles when running. The muscles engaged in running get righter and the ones that aren’t don’t.

Yoga’s Benefits for Runners

Yoga is a form of exercise that focuses solely on body movement and position therefor the outcomes, the ‘gains’ aren’t as important to a person performing yoga.

You are far more aware of your body while performing yoga. You can, therefore, gauge the effect an exercise is having on it. Your body is far more flexible and many runners cite Yoga as a solution for greater movement.

Anyone who is a runner will be surprised at how easily their legs give in when performing it. When running, you’re only really targeting one certain area while others remain ignored. Yoga engages your muscles on all planes so it increases endurance.

Running is a purely physical exercise and of course, some might use it as a mental break, there really isn’t a comparison to the workout your mind gets when you’re working out.  Yoga uses all muscle groups, your legs, toes, the back muscles your abdomen and the most important muscle of all, your brain!

One of the most important aspects to both forms of exercise is worked on and perfected. This is the act of breathing. Yoga is the exercise to maintain your breathing and balancing it with your poses. If you’re not breathing correctly during yoga, you might as well not even do the poses. Yoga builds the discipline of breathing. And if you’re a runner, you know the importance of maintaining a correct breathing pattern. Honing that skill from yoga just might do the trick!

Learn more with Yoga for Runners.

How Yoga Helps You to Reduce Stress

Let’s be clear on one thing- stress is unavoidable and can sneak its way into even the happiest person’s life. Stress follows any ordeal that is characterized by our expectations or something we’re working very hard for. It can raid our minds and bodies before weddings, examinations, presentations, social gatherings or just about even the most minor of things. Therefore, it’s safe to say that being stressed is not our own choice, but in fact, it is a-free-of-cost feeling we get for every ordeal in our life as a spontaneous visitor.

Now that we’re clear stress comes and goes as it pleases but if it’s getting too much, there are things we can do to avoid it for e.g. yoga. Here’s how yoga helps to reduce stress.

Relaxes the Mind

It’s all in your head/mind, which is why it’s hard to get rid of it. Meditation will help that mind of yours to stop and focus on just one thing. There are certain yoga poses, which because of their complexity, help your mind to focus on them entirely, in turn, calming your brain that appears to be in a rut with all of the frantic thought processes.

Relaxes the Body

After the mind -comes the body. Yoga will help your body to release its tension and stress by breaking all barriers that had been holding all your muscles and nerves captive for so long. The different yoga poses will guide your body into various positions, resulting in increased flexibility and great posture. Whether your job had been a reason for stress for you or it was your personal life- yoga will help you focus on something that matters on hand.

Helps to Develop Connection of the Mind with the Body

Once you start doing yoga, your body will work to ease into all poses that you try. In doing so, your mind will come to terms with the requirement of concentration that the body will require from it. In no time your body and mind will work in perfect unison on the route to distressing.

Relaxed and Effective Breathing

Stress really affects the most trivial bodily functions as well as something as basic as breathing. If you are a stressed individual, you wouldn’t even realize the parts of your mind and body the pent-up stress is affecting. Yoga will help to induce an ‘everything’s fine’ and ‘stay calm’ feeling in you until your ragged breathing comes to a stable inhale and exhale. In this way, you’ll realize how tough and anxious your breathing had been prior to beginning your yoga exercise.

Yoga is the best way to reduce all that pent-up stress, for a lot of reasons. It gives you the energy to release your emotions and directly and effectively with the least bit of damage to our own well-being. Just know that all of the stress, guilt, remorse, sadness, and anger resides inside our bodies. From shoulders to arms to legs to our backs, we store all the negativity from top to bottom. Yoga will help to let go of all of that and help us bury the hatchet with our own selves.

Want to learn more? Get your copy of Yoga for Stress now!