Yoga: My Stress Reliever

 Photo CC by Nadir Hashmi

Last week was a very stressful week for me. It seemed like everything that could have happened, happened. Unfortunately, that stress carried into this week. My huge fundraising project was coming up on Tuesday and I still had so much that needed done before even being slightly ready for the event. After a long day at work on Monday, I decided to take a break from all of the preparation and attend yoga class that night. There were new faces in class and they were all pretty much older than I am (I’m the youngest that attends the class but I’m totally fine with that!).

I didn’t expect to learn too many new poses for this week but was up for any new challenge my yoga instructor threw my way. To my surprise, we learned a new pose and it had to deal with releasing negative energy. How crazy is that? Sometimes it’s crazy how things work out.

Anyway, the pose was called Catching the Waves. My yoga instructor described it as taking all of your negative energy in your body and releasing it back into the earth. She told us to think of something in our life that is weighing us down and let all of that negativity go. I thought about all of the stress and negativity that had happened to me in the past week as I was doing this pose.

I can’t find a video to share to show what this pose looked like in action but I will try my very best to explain it. Stand with your feet spread apart, your right foot should be pointing forward and your left foot should be pointing out in front of you. As you inhale, bring your hands toward you and when you exhale push your hands away from you. Also when you are exhaling, bend your left knee and use your whole body to push the negative energy away from you. The hardest part to me about yoga is mastering the breathing! And that is a very crucial part for this pose.

It’s crazy how much better I felt after doing this yoga pose. I am so glad I went to yoga this week because it turned out to be exactly what I needed! I also did Yoga With Adriene videos a couple days out of the week and that helped decrease my stress level as well. For this upcoming week, I am going to focus on breathing techniques!