Relieve your work stress with Yoga

Everyone has some stress in their everyday work responsibilities. Whether your stress is about deadline pressure, overwhelming workloads or dealing with difficult people, it is a common problem for all. Take advantage of the stress relieving benefits of yoga to help you through your days.

Instead of holding on to your stress in life you need to find ways to let it go. Release it from your body and your mind. Yoga helps you do just that. By bringing your awareness inside your body, you can control how you react to stress. It’s a beautiful skill that is easily acquired if you have an open mind.

When you are practicing yoga you bring your focus inside your body. You listen to your breathing and you focus on your physical body. You feel muscle groups as they are stretched, looking for weaknesses and finding strengths you might not have known you have.

This simple act of focusing relieves stress. The practice of connecting to your body allows you to breathe out negativity: stress, frustration, and anger. We use the breath as an outlet to release negativity and also an inlet to absorb positive energy. Working through the physical yoga postures releases stress in your muscles where you don’t even realize you are holding onto it; across the shoulders and into your neck, even in the hips.

When our minds get stressed we reactively contract muscles. Sometimes we get headaches, back-aches, and many other aches just because we have no way to release the tightness in our bodies. Practice yoga with an open mind and look for your stress compartments. Once you find them, gently and mindfully release them. Your yoga practice should provide a full body and mind release. Look inside and see what you are holding onto.

As you find your strengths you build confidence in yourself. Once you realize how your body reacts to stress you will be more likely to foresee it and choose not to react the same way. You are in control of your reaction. You might think you can’t help but react when things are difficult, but with a little practice you can control how you perceive tense situations or triggers and choose not to react.

Reactions, stressful ones anyway, cause more harm than good in your body. The more stress you hold onto, the more you have negative reactions and it turns into a cycle of stress and reactions. It doesn’t get better until you allow it to stop. So STOP! Take some time for your self – even if it’s only 20 minutes per day. You will feel lighter, with a clear mind and ready to take on another day.

Make yoga a part of your life. Everyone needs to. It is simply time you give to yourself to feel better about … everything!