The other day, a friend said he was worried about his seven-year-old daughter. It was not that she was ill or very naughty or rude. To my shock, he said that the child seems stressed. The pressures at school and the intense competition among pupils is also making our children stressed.
When you combine stress with unhealthy dietary habits, that leads to another problem — obesity and lifestyle disease later on in life.
Fortunately, stress and obesity can be beaten by exercise and unlike fighting excess weight, beating stress does not take long for you to get it under control.
Yoga, whether practised in its original form or in one of its many variants, is a wonderful way to beat stress. The reason for this is very simple. Yoga makes us pause and observe and breathe, things we are forgetting to do in life’s hurly-burly.
There are many out there who think yoga is just another way for the new-age enthusiasts to get their claws into you. They are wrong. As a form of exercise, yoga is spot-on and like all exercise it helps us clear out toxins, tone and stretch and get healthier, besides clearing out our minds.
However, its pace also means that we are making our choices in a slower and more deliberate manner, thus enabling us to be fully aware participants in our change for the better.
Practicing yoga does not mean that you have to stand on your head or loop your legs around your neck. You can if you want to but it is not necessary. Practicing the basic ‘asanas’ (movements) will help you in multiple ways, such as decreased stress, increased strength and flexibility, lower blood pressure and better balance.
It also results in a better night’s sleep and improves concentration. The root premise of yoga is to live the moment, to control your mind and focus its energies.
If you are new to yoga, it is understandable to be confused by the plethora of options available out there. However, I would recommend that you try the gentlest yoga option available — Hatha yoga.
The other forms of yoga, like Iyengar or Vinyasa demand a certain level of expertise. Yoga is a deeply personal practice and it is not about who can hold a pose longer or who can stretch their limbs out more.
It is about relaxing, listening to your body and doing the best you can at that point of time. Yoga also emphasises a lot on breathing and a good teacher should be able to guide you through when to inhale and when to exhale as you practice your asanas. This provides great benefits for battling stress. It is also a wonderful focusing technique.