This article is available as an ebook for download here.
Yoga, as a practice, is often overlooked as just a yoga workout which is a combination of different yoga poses like Vrikshasana or Garudasana. But often, we fail to obscure how these physical yoga asanas impact the work-life balance in our lives.
Yoga benefits many aspects of our life rather than just helping us deal with physical problems such as neck pain, joint pains, etc. In addition, it helps us understand our life patterns and strengths. These elements play a significant contribution in attaining a healthy work-life balance.
Work-Life balance is nothing but allocating equal time to professional and personal life.
It might sound elementary, but many of us are often wrecked by our family complaining about spending less time with them. Sometimes, it can be vice versa, especially during the lockdown; we are stuck at home and sometimes neglect our professional goals.
Self-reflection is the key to staying organized and thus avoiding work-life imbalance. Read on to learn more about how yoga asanas can help improve the work-life balance.
Self Introspection
We live in a digital world surrounded by many harmful elements like stress, toxic medications, and an unhealthy lifestyle. But unfortunately, we tend to pay the slightest attention to ourselves with so much going on around us.
Agreed? If yes, then we must know that a bit of yoga practice daily can help in self-introspection because the ultimate goal of yoga is to help any individual reach the stage of enlightenment in one’s life.
Stay Confident Throughout the Day
A disciplined and healthy morning routine is a perfect blend of “Pranayama,” “Asanas,” and “Meditation.” Mornings like this will help us start our day with serenity and thus boost our confidence to handle all the abrupt and planned activities of the day without any confusion. Then, kickstart your day with a yoga workout to experience a day with more clarity and less mess.
Inculcate Conscious Habits
Our daily routine, starting from waking up to going back to bed, every habit and pattern we follow influences our work-life balance significantly. Due to continuous office work, we sometimes miss eating on time and tend to grab more coffee to fill our stomachs at unusual times, which leads to serious health problems.
We unconsciously tend to adapt to an unhealthy lifestyle due to our busy schedules and meetings during work. A solid yoga workout helps inculcate self-awareness in individuals and thus blow away harmful patterns and habits from daily routine.
Knowing Limits
Our body and mind have certain limits in performing tasks or understanding certain things. When we try to perform tasks exceeding these limits, it results in stress. Practicing yoga poses daily can help us understand our physical and mental limitations. We can even explore new strengths and abilities by honoring these limits.
Physical Activities
Due to the internet-driven world we live in and the corporate culture we work in, our bodies are now used to sitting in a place for almost 5-6 hours looking at the computer screens and working.
Okay, this sounds not so good, but we cannot escape reality. With almost zero physical movements while working, our body might experience dangerous health hazards like chronic joint aches, high blood pressure, etc.
This is precisely where an effective yoga workout steps in.
Every yoga asana focuses on increasing an individual’s flexibility while rejuvenating the body muscle. So do yoga and get out of that stress and pressure you hold all day long at work.
Now that we are clear on different ways to attain the work-life balance with yoga, here is one of the best yoga poses to practice and destress yourself after a long day’s work.
Standing Forward Bend Pose
This yoga pose effectively relieves stress, depression, and fatigue by stretching hamstrings, thighs, and hips. This pose is also abbreviated as Uttanasana, in which “ut” means “intense” and the verb “tan,” meaning to “stretch.”
History of Uttanasana
Uttansana is believed to have originated in the 19th century and is found to be documented first in the Mysore, a Hindu text titled Shri Tattva Nidhi. It is said that this pose is one of the most prominent yoga poses that provide utmost balance to the body while also offering various strengthening and physical stretching benefits to the human body.
Steps to Practice Uttanasana
- Stand erect by placing your shoulders and feet apart and parallel to each other.
- Placer your feet firm to the ground and press them firmly.
- Breathe out gently and bend down slowly by placing your chest and stomach on your thighs.
- If you have just started your practice, it is better that you blend your knees at this stage.
- Now try moving your hip upwards through your hamstring muscles.
- Once you feel confident enough to hold on and look straight in the same position, place your forearms crossed next to each leg, try to grab your elbows, and hand your head downwards.
- You can start practicing the Uttanasana by holding the pose for thirty seconds and gradually increasing the timing to one minute, repeating the steps mentioned above.
- Ensure that you inhale and exhale while holding in the same position.
- To have effective results of this amazing calming yoga asana, try extending your torso while exhaling and moving deeper and deeper while inhaling.
To Summarize: These are a few ways consistent yoga practice can help achieve a proper work-life balance. It helps remove clutter in our minds and thus helps us stay organized and plan our day perfectly without any roadblocks. But, to see the fruitful results of yoga workouts, we must start doing yoga daily to explore our inner selves.
Different yoga asanas can help relieve stress, and anxiety in the human body. Stay tuned and check out this space for more yoga solutions to encounter various physical and mental problems you might encounter daily. Because we genuinely believe that yoga is the most powerful tool to enlighten human lives and teach everyone how to live a healthy lifestyle.
If you would like to know how to learn yoga at home with Step-by-step instructions and with real-time feedback, this is the place for you.