Growth Using Yoga
Breathe in through your chest, ribs, belly. Back out through your belly, ribs, chest. Repeat. This is the way one of my online yoga classes starts. It forces you to stop and pause at the start, giving yourself a few moments of calm. Then into the stretches, strength poses and twists. The session ends lying on the mat. I feel incredibly relaxed and my mind feels less rushed.
Undoubtedly there are many benefits to yoga in our busy world. I started doing it regularly a couple of months before lockdown happened in the UK. I did dance classes for around 12 years and I think this meant that my body and limbs quickly got used to being flexible again. However, if you haven’t done any previous dance, yoga or flexibility training there are many yoga for beginner's classes online (check out the video above).
Not only have I regained a lot of my flexibility, I have toned my legs and arms and I have lost overall body fat through this healthy workout routine. I was going to say that intense exercise hasn’t been appealing to me but actually, that’s not true. Sometimes yoga is intense, the poses you need to get into and hold do build up heat in my body and make my heart rate speed up.
I mentioned that yoga sometimes forces you to pause. Focusing on your breathing, how it feels, bringing your mind back to what you are doing with your breath when it starts to drift. Being in the present and this practice of focusing on what you are currently doing and how it makes you feel is a technique linked to mindfulness.
If you’re unfamiliar to mindfulness, the practice is said to help people become more self-aware, feel calmer and less stressed, feel more comfortable with responding to your thoughts, cope with difficult or unhelpful thoughts and be kinder to yourself. As you can imagine, this helps greatly with mental health issues such as anxiety and depression and stress related issues (check out the video below).
Yoga is said to help with self -confidence, personally I feel more body confident, physically stronger and more flexible and to me all of these things do make me feel more confident about myself in general.
Other benefits which add to self-confidence are feeling clearer minded and calmer which help with focusing, not only during the yoga session but outside of it. Having a clearer head space gives me room to consider my goals and ways I can meet them.
I have felt empowered through doing yoga, the challenging poses become less challenging through time and improving and progressing makes me feel better both mentally and physically. It's also great for posture, as your own body language feeds into mood and emotions and how you come across to others. I stand with my feet firm, knowing that I can hold my own ground.
If you are interested in trying yoga then the Teen yoga Foundation website might be a good place to start. This UK charity works with schools in the UK and abroad to deliver courses to young people, they also have online resources. The charity believes yoga is great for well-being and helps young people “cope with life” and the stresses that come along with growing up. Check them out here.
Article by Andrea Lewis