Five Yoga Poses to Relieve Stress and Anxiety

This post originally appeared in my Sunday email, Spiritual Growth Sundays. It’s a guest post from my friend, Natalie Generalovich, a certified yoga instructor (RYT-200).

Yoga is an incredible tool to stay healthy in the mind and body. Not only can you increase physical mobility and strength—but by connecting your breath to your movement and making different shapes with the body, you can instantly relieve mental stress and anxiety that can often build up in our physical body.

Here are five yoga asana poses that will help relieve your stress and anxiety:

1. Child’s Pose

Child’s Pose helps to stretch the hips, thighs, and ankles while reducing stress and fatigue. It gently relaxes the muscles on the front of the body while softly and passively stretching the muscles of the back torso. This resting pose centers, calms, and soothes the brain, making it a therapeutic posture for relieving stress. When performed with the head and torso supported, it can also help relieve back and neck pain. 

INSTRUCTIONS:

Beginning in table top, take the knees slightly wider than the hips making space for the chest to rest between the thighs. Place the top of the feet and shins on the floor and draw the toes together behind you. Hinging at the hips, allow the sitting bones to drop back towards the heels, bending deeply into the knees The belly will drop between the thighs. Rest the forehead on the floor, then reach the arms to the top o f the mat, placing the hands shoulder-width apart. Draw the shoulders towards the waist allowing the neck to be long.

2. Legs Up The Wall

Legs up the wall is a restorative inversion that combined with controlled breathing promotes deep relaxation. This posture also facilitates venous drainage to increase circulation, soothes swollen or cramped feet and legs, stretches the hamstrings, relieves low back tension and relaxes the pelvic floor.

INSTRUCTIONS:

Start seated next to a wall. Turn sideways so your hip is touching the wall and your legs are in front of you. Swivel onto your back and take your legs up the wall. Move yourself closer to the wall so your sit bones and hamstrings are touching the wall. Rest your arms comfortable at your side. 

3. Supported Bridge

Supported bridge is a restorative inversion that relives headaches, anxiety, depression and irritability. It improves digestion, respiration and circulation through stretching the neck, shoulders and hip flexors. Supported bridge releases tension in the low back by elongating the spine, reduces “heaviness” in the abdomen and reproductive system, and balances the kidneys, adrenals and thyroid.

INSTRUCTIONS:

Lay on your back and grab a firm pillow or a yoga block. Bend your knees and place the soles of your feet hip-width distance apart on the map. Place your arms at your side, palms facing down. Shift your sit bones closer to your heels so that you can graze your heels with your fingertips. Lift your hips off the ground and place a pillow or block underneath your sacrum—the bony part of your lower back. 

4. Supported Reclined Bound Angle

This restorative posture stretches the inner thighs, groin, knees, and releases the lumbar spine to relieve low back pain. It opens the pelvis and improves external rotation of the hips. This posture helps relieve symptoms of stress, depression, menstruation and menopause by stimulating abdominal organs like the ovaries and prostate gland, bladder and kidneys. Bound Angle also stimulates the heart and improves general circulation.

INSTRUCTIONS:

Find two small pillows and a rolled up blanket, lumbar pillow or yoga bolster. Preparing to lay on your back, sit at the center of your mat and place the lumbar pillow or blanket behind you touching your sit bones. Lay down on top so your shoulder blades are hanging over the edge of the pillow and your chest is lifted higher than your shoulders. Your head should be resting on the lumbar pillow or blanket. Take the soles of your feet together, open your knees wide and place the other two pillows underneath your thighs. Lay your arms at your sides, palms facing up.

5. Supine Twist

Supine twists lengthens, relaxes and realigns the spine, and helps relieve low back pain. It stretches the back muscles, glutes, massages the back, hips and abdominal muscles. Supine twists also help to hydrate the spinal discs, encouraging the flow of fresh blood to your digestive organs, increasing the health and function of your entire digestive system.

INSTRUCTIONS:

Begin on your back with your knees bent and feet on the floor. Stretch your arms wide like a “T” with the palms facing up. Lift your knees up towards your chest, drop your knees to the right allowing your left hip to lift off the the floor and the pelvis to rotate to the right. Keep rooting down through the left shoulder blade to open the front of the chest. If you’re able to, turn your head and look to your left fingers.

Want more yoga goodness?

For more yoga from Natalie, subscribe to her YouTube channel for live-streamed yoga classes Monday through Friday.