Yoga For Stress Relief – How To Manage Stress Levels And Achieve Inner Peace?

How to utilize yoga for stress relief is one major question that cannot be comprehended by many. If you have been looking for some best ways to relieve stress, I can without any doubt assure you that Yoga is one best hobby you can inculcate.

Here are the seven best yoga poses for stress relief and some beautiful suggestions on when and where to practice them.

Yoga For Stress Relief! Why Is It The Best Choice?

Have you wanted to give up on your stressful life and spend some time alone in the woods? It surely means that you need to spend more time in nature because nothing can calm and soothe your stressful mind other than a peaceful ambience.

You can just close your eyes for a second and think of other physical activities like Aerobics, swimming, cardio. These are all, of course, versatile in their own ways! But can you picture yourself practicing them by staying close to nature?

This makes it pretty much evident why Yoga is one of the best ways to relieve stress. You can also inculcate a huge amount of serenity in your mind by practising some basic postures of yoga for stress relief without having the need of digging deeper into the spiritual process.

How To Relieve Stress – Here Are Seven Best Yoga Poses For Stress Relief

Yoga, in reducing stress, helps our body attain a state of equilibrium mind, body, and spirit. There are only few effective remedies for health problems like stress, anxiety, and depression. Yoga is one of those successful treatments. These seven postures help in regulating a perfect blood circulation throughout your body which does not properly happen when you are subjected to stress(1).

1. Sun Salutations Or Surya Namaskar

One basic aspect of yoga that is feasible to be practised by people of all ages is Surya Namaskar or sun salutations. The 12 poses of sun salutations are so specific towards stretching your body to the maximum extent, they enable the proper flow of blood throughout your body.

Each cycle involves 12 poses and by completing all the poses at a stretch, you are said to be completing one cycle. If you are a beginner, you can complete six such cycles and gradually increase the number to 12 cycles per day.

The average number of cycles you should be performing is 27 but do not rush yourself to reach the target. It is still okay to be able to perform 12 to 15 cycles per day.    

2. Shavasana Or The Corpse Pose

There is nothing as wonderful and relaxing as shavasana which is one of the best poses of yoga for stress relief.

This is the best yoga posture you can get into after having performed sun salutations because it helps in slowing down your heart rate and helps you feel relaxed.

Make sure that you perform shavasana after each and every individual yoga pose to obtain a major relief from stress.

How To Practice Shavasana?

Lie down on the floor with your ventral side of your body (the side of the body with chest and stomach) facing towards the roof!

Close your eyes and ease your muscles to stay as relaxed as possible. Try concentrating on your inhalation and exhalation so that you keep up your concentration levels while staying relaxed.

3. Anjali Mudra Or Salutation Seal

By practising Anjali mudra, you tend to bring your hands together and join your palms. It is the most profound way of greeting someone in India which they call as “Namaste.”

You join your hands and bring them closer to your chest and while doing this, the pressure points of your ears, mind and eyes that are located at the tips of your fingers get activated.

If you have been looking for the best ways to relieve stress, Anjali mudra is the best pose you can practice because the pose not only activates your pressure points but you can also meditate and control your thoughts and emotions while staying in the pose.

How To Meditate In Anjali Mudra?

• Thoughts can come and go when you try to mediate, but you need not worry because it is the natural tendency of our brain to generate thoughts on its own. Do not try to stop your thought process.
• Let the thoughts come and go and you can simply concentrate on the process of your inhalation and exhalation
• Do not get frustrated if you are unable to concentrate on your breathing process. Practice can eventually make you perfect. Keep practising but never give up!
• Make sure that you select a quiet and peaceful place for yourself while practising Anjali mudra or the salutation seal because as a beginner, you may get deviated too soon.
• Anjali mudra is one of the traditional ways of greeting someone and is also one of the primary and basic poses of yoga for stress relief

4. Kapalbhati – Yoga For Stress Relief

Want to experience the feeling of blood circulating throughout your body? This pranayama will make you experience the flow of blood throughout your face. Your hormones are also going to feel relaxed, you would be obtaining a major relief from all the stress that has been captivating your mind. Here is how to practice this multi-beneficial pose of yoga to reduce stress.

To Know More: Kapalbhati Benefits for Health

5.  How To Practice Kapalbhati?

• Sit cross-legged with your spine straight and erect.
• You can place your fingers in any basic mudra that you wish to (Mudra is a particular manner in which you adjust your fingers and place your wrists on your knees while sitting cross-legged)
• Kapalbhati involves a rapid exhalation and a minimal inhalation.
• You need to exhale vigorously and with each and every deep exhalation, you pull your abdomen inwards.
• Do not concentrate much on inhalation because you will automatically inhale after each and every exhalation but remember that you need to keep this minimal.
• You will have to continue this process of deep exhalation and minimal inhalation as many times as you can in a time period of five minutes.
• You will sense your cheeks going numb because of the blood flow that has increased within your body.

Nadi Shodhana (Alternate Nostril)  

Nadi Shodhana is one of the Pranayama techniques, best known to provide a deep sense of relaxation, thereby reducing stress and anxiety. 

It is recommended to practice the technique on an empty stomach, early in the morning for best results. 

How To Practice Nadi Shodhana?

• Start by a deep inhalation and a slow and gentle exhalation. Take your right hand into Vishnu Mudhra (the tips of middle finger and index finger should touch the base of your palm)
• Place the thumb of your right hand on your right nostril and make a deep a slow exhalation.
• Keep the right nostril closed and inhale through the left nostril. Use your pinky finger and ring finger to close your left nostril and exhale through the right nostril keeping the left nostril closed. 
•  Inhale again through the right nostril and use your thumb to close the right nostril as you slowly exhale through the left nostril. 
• This completes one round of Nadi Shodhana. 

6. Balasana Or The Child Pose

You have to agree with me when I say that you sometimes feel like becoming a child again! As a child, you never had any real responsibilities and life was so easy and relaxing.

Read More: Best Yoga Poses For Anxiety

Do you yearn to obtain this kind of relaxation again? If yes, here is a chilled Yoga pose for you called balasana which they call child pose because it involves you stretching and relaxing like a child.

The pose not only relieves you from stress but also enables a proper blood circulation throughout your body.

How To Practice Child’s Pose?

To make the best out of this yoga posture, you can practice this with kids at your home. This is going to help you have a playful time and relieve you from all the stress.

1. Kneel down and make yourself comfortable in the position of “Vajrasana”
2. Bend forward and stretch your hands forward such that your forehead and chest touches your knees.
3. Stay in the position for two to three minutes and get back to your normal position.
4. Practice this four to five times until you feel completely relaxed and eased out.

Read More: Yoga for Back Pain Relief

7. Bhujangasana Or Cobra Pose

Is your work a desk job? A 9 hours’ desk job can cause your muscles to become stiff and rigid and decrease the flow of blood throughout your body. This can increase your stress levels(2) and lead to many problems related to spinal cord and your upper back muscles.

The problem of stiff and rigid muscles may seem like a minor one, but continuing this kind of a sedentary lifestyle may land you in plenty of problems like damage to your tissues and ligaments.

Here is the best pose for those who try to seek relaxation.

How To Practice Cobra Pose?

• Find a nice and refreshing location close to nature. A clean and mopped backyard will also do. Lie down on your dorsal side such that your spine and back face the roof.
• Try raising the upper front of your body such that only the part of your body that is present below your stomach is in contact with the floor.
• Try stretching your upper front of the body backwards as much as you can. This will help in the relaxation of your neck muscles and relieve you from the rigidity and stiffness of your neck muscles.

The Best Time To Practice Yoga

Is it really possible to find some time to practice Yoga when you are completely entangled with your work life? You wake up and the first thing that you try to reach is your smartphone, only to look at the list of deadlines that you have to meet and live by another sorrowful, stressful day.

So how do you obtain a permanent solution to the question of how to reduce stress naturally?

Bedtime is a great time for meditation and Pranayama. Shutting off all electronic devices an hour before bedtime, having a cool, dark room, and using lavender essential oil for stress relief and relaxation gives you a good night’s sleep.

Practice Yoga In The Open Arms Of Nature

How to manage stress? Do you perhaps know how easy it is to make use of Yoga for stress relief? You just have to live in a beautiful moment that enriches your mind or you can also practice the Anjali mudra in the open arms of nature.

How great does it feel to close your eyes and listen to the bird’s chirp as they fly across the sky? The fresh fragrance of early morning breeze blowing through your hair as you sit cross-legged in front of a sun that has just risen up across the horizon to brighten up and colour the sky with its bright rays turning the faded night sky into a magenta and yellow mixed beautiful dawn.

You sit quietly in your place and breathe in the essence of a lively morning when the rays of sun crawl into your bones, the intensity of sun rays being an inspiration to remind you of your inner strength.

Know More: How Breathing Exercises Helps to Solve Many Problems

Just living in the moment and enjoying your very existence can make you forget all the stress that you have been enduring.

How Yoga Forges A Deeper Connectivity?

When is it actually said that a body is stress-free? When you are happy by your own nature and each cell in your body bursts out of ecstasy! When you are totally connected with your inner self.

When you do not let the external situations overpower you and when you learn to maintain a healthy relationship with yourself. Those are the moments of peace and those moments are what we strive for and this can practically happen only with Yoga.

“Dhyana” or meditation as it is usually called is a part of Yoga that lets you control your emotions and thoughts. So when your living system is in balance, nothing can overpower you. You will learn how to manage stress by not letting the taunts and tantrums hurled at you by your boss effect you in any way.

Doesn’t it sound great and interesting to unleash your true nature? And how easy does life become when you balance your work and personal life by simply practising yoga for stress relief? Why late then, my friend! Get a go with all the energy you can grab from the world and be relieved from stress ever after.

Bottom Line

If you are in a hunt of how to relieve stress and live a peaceful life, the answer is really very simple! Put on your sweatpants, motivate yourself to raise early and find a peaceful location close to nature to practice these seven poses of yoga for stress relief!

Yoga is not only a permanent stress buster, but it is also a beautiful process of unleashing your true self and one of the greatest practices towards spiritual awakening.

For some time, let it just be a beautiful morning, a lovely ambience and some pleasurable poses of yoga for stress relief.