Yoga for Stress Relief

Deadlines, disappointments and demands can cause stress in your life. While each problem may be small, the cumulative impact can lead to chronic stress. This in turn can cause serious ailments. It is worrisome that most of us do nothing to keep stress away and end up harming ourselves further by consuming painkillers, antidepressants and sleeping pills.

In fact, many of us, especially those who are working, don’t even realize that we are suffering from this life-threatening disease. Yoga for stress relief includes a plethora of techniques, including meditation, visualization and exercise.

Yoga for Stress Relief: What is stress?

Stress is our physical or emotional responses to good or bad situations. Mental symptoms of stress include tension, excessive fatigue, insomnia, irritability and lack of concentration. Headache, dry mouth, frequent urination, a fast heartbeat, sweating palms and difficulty in breathing are some of the physical symptoms of stress. Chronic stress can cause high blood pressure, poor immune system, increased risk of heart attack and stroke, infertility and aging. Stress can make you more vulnerable to anxiety and depression.

Yoga for Stress Relief: How does it work?

Depending upon one’s choices, everyone has different ways to de-stress, popularly called stress busters. One may listen to soothing music, dance, watch movies, cook their favorite dish, travel, exercise or play with their pet. One of the best de-stressing techniques is yoga, which is being used for 5,000 years to relieve stress.

Yoga is both a science and an art and is practiced for healing both physical and mental stress. It helps you understand life, increases your ability to think logically and enables to you handle various tasks vigorously without stressing yourself.

Yoga practice includes asana, pranayama, bandha, kriya, shatkarma, mudra and meditation. The various asanas (postures) of yoga relax your body and help release physical tension. Practicing pranayam (breathing), dhyana (meditation) and asana help in releasing muscular tension, increasing body awareness and improving mind and body coordination.

Meditation is a boon for people suffering from low blood pressure, inability to focus and anxiety. After meditation you feel light and peaceful. The various breathing techniques in pranayama supply oxygen to all the parts of body and cleanse it, resulting in increased level of energy and awareness of breathing.

Himalayan yogi Bharat Thakur has introduced a new concept of yoga, artistic yoga. The various techniques of artistic yoga have been devised to suit the physical and mental needs of the modern man and to improve awareness. Apart from offering yoga classes in groups and personal sessions, Bharat Thakur also offers corporate yoga in the form of ‘Transformation’ to help companies de-stress employees and increase productivity.