Daily Yoga Pose
Pose Name: Butterfly
Sanskrit Pose Name: Baddha Konasana
Chakra: Root Chakra
Level of Pose: Beginner
Health Benefits: Stretches your hips to improve mobility and reduces menstrual cramping. Helps the reproductive organ health, stimulates digestion, improves posture and stretches the thighs. It's great for a healthy pregnancy as well as a healthy prostate. Helps reduce headaches.
Emotional Benefits: Releases anger and allows one to get in touch with their passion. Can reduce scattered thinking to help you find stillness.
Instructions: Sit on the floor and bring the soles of your feet together, interlacing your fingers like a basket under your feet. Straighten your back and pull your sternum up and forward. Breathe deeply and lean forward, bringing your forehead towards the floor. Breathe deeply and hold the position while you continue to energetically pull your knees towards the floor.
Pose Name: Chair Pose
Sanskrit Pose Name: Utkatasana
Chakra: Root Chakra
Level of Pose: Beginner
Health Benefits: Strengthens the legs, ankles, lower back and shoulders. Improves heart and organ health while toning the stomach. Improves balance, energizes the body and creates heat in the body. Also stretches the chest and shoulders.
Emotional Benefits: Builds determination and energy. Helps you feel responsible, capable and confident.
Instructions: Begin standing and bring your feet hip distance apart with the toes pointing directly forward. Inhale through your nose and lift your arms so they are in line with your ears and your palms face each other. Exhale and push your hips back as you sit into an imaginary chair. Keep the arms by the ears and lift your chest as you pull your knees energetically towards eachother without touching them together. Inhale and try to lengthen your spine by lifting the top of your head and exhale tilt your tailbone towards the ground as you knit your front ribs in so they are not popping out. Inhale and as you exhale sink a little lower. Stay here for three more breathes and then slowly come back to standing.
Pose Name: Upward Facing Dog
Sanskrit Pose Name: Urdhva Mukha Svanasana
Chakra: Solar Plexus Chakra, Sacral Chakra and Heart Chakra
Level of Pose: Intermediate
Health Benefits: Strengthens your arms, wrists, spine and legs. Stretches your hip flexors. Improves respiratory system. Stimulates abdominal organs and improves spinal flexibility. Increases energy.
Emotional Benefits: Improves personal power, creative expression and generates feelings of peace and harmony.
Instructions: Lay on your stomache with your legs zipped together and place your palms on the ground underneath your shoulders. Spread your fingers wide and untuck your toes bringing the tops of your feet on the ground. Inhale through your nose, pull your shoulder blades down your back and lift your chest so your arms are straight. Lift your chin so your head tilts back and keep your lower belly pulling in. Take three slow deep breaths through your nose while pulling your shoulders down and away from your earts. Exhale and slowly lower your stomach onto the ground. Repeat two more time to increase energy.
Pose Name: Warrior Two
Sanskrit Pose Name: Virabhadrasana II
Chakra: Root Chakra and Sacral Chakra
Level of Pose: Beginner
Health Benefits: Strenthens and tones legs, arms, back and core. Stretches shoulders, legs and hips. Improves hip mobility. Improves posture. Improves ankle flexibility.
Emotional Benefits: Increases creativity. Releases guilt and resentment. Builds positivity and will power. Helps you focus.
Instructions: Come to plank pose as if you're going to do a pushup. Step the right foot foward between your hands. Spin your back heel down and cartwheel your left arm up and back raising your torso. Reach your right arm forwad and your left arm back with your palms facing down. Keep the right knee bent but do not let the right knee move past the right ankle to protect your knee. Push the edge of the back foot down and pull your right knee to the right to open your hips. Sink lower to stretch the hips and legs more. Take three deep ujayyi breaths as you left your chest and bring your shoulder blades down your back away from your ears. Cartwheel your arms back to the ground and switch sides repeating the same thing.
Pose Name: Revolved Chair
Sanskrit Pose Name: Parivrtta Utkatasana
Chakra: Root Chakra, Heart Chakra
Level of Pose: Beginner
Health Benefits: Improves spine flexibility and energy. Improves digestion and reduces stiffness in shoulders while improving posture. Strengthens core and thighs.
Emotional Benefits: Improves focus and helps you reduce anxiety. Opens you to experience love.
Instructions: Begin standing with your feet hip distance apart. Lift your arms straight up so they are in line with your ears and then sit back as if you're sitting into a chair. Tuck your tail bone and engage your core keeping your chest lifted. Bring your palms together in front of your heart. Take the left elbow outside of the right knee and press the palms together. Use your core to twist and do not force the twist. Open your arms reaching up with the right and down with the left. Breathe deeply. Bring the palms back together and come back to the center before switching sides.
Searching for more Inspiration? Go feed your Soul >>
What is Yoga?
In Sanskrit, yoga literally refers to a connection or uniting, or the act of discipline. A practice that dates back thousands of years, yoga involves a combination of meditation, movement, and spirituality to bring us into connection with the Universal energy that allows us to connect with our soul. Yoga guides us to enlightenment, not just through the flows and poses themselves, but through a retraining of the mind that harnesses the energy of the body to expand one’s consciousness. Yoga has many forms and the benefits reach far beyond the physical body. Like meditation, yoga is a personal practice that will look different from person to person.
Yoga Articles
What are the Different Types of Yoga?
In the west, there are 22 main different types of yoga. The poses in traditional yoga are called asanas. The traditional branches of yoga include Hatha, Vinyasa, Iyengar, Anusara, and Ashtanga. Traditional yoga almost always includes mantras, breathwork, and meditation. Kriya yoga, kundalini yoga, and yoga nidra focus more on the emotions, mind, and soul through a development of the mind and energetic body. Recently, more westernized versions have evolved, giving us Bikram, Restorative, Yin, hot yoga, and many other variations.
It’s important to realize that every type of yoga will have an entirely different feeling, depending on the style, speed, environment, and the teacher (if there is one) - so don’t let one bad experience throw you off. Yoga takes study, persistence and personal dedication. Keep experimenting until you find the style that works best for you and your unique needs.
How to Decide Which Type of Yoga is Best For You
If you are looking to lose weight, a regular vinyasa or heated vinyasa class can help speed up your metabolism. The emotions can best be aided in slower, more traditional forms of yoga where meditation and breathwork are prioritized. Hatha yoga is a great way to prepare the body to sit in meditation. Ultimately, reading about the types of yoga will allow you to intuitively pick a type that will help you grow the most.
If you’re dealing with substance abuse, depression, anxiety, or abusive relationships, just getting to class can be difficult. Not everyone has access to a yoga studio either. At Daily Life, we want to assist you in developing your yoga practice by meeting you exactly where you’re at. Check this page every day for a new daily yoga pose that you can experiment with in the comfort of your own home.
Meditation Articles
_370_247_c1.jpg "Breathwork to Bring Back & Recharge Your Motivation")
How Does Yoga Affect Mental Health?
Yoga is continually prescribed to help people with depression, PTSD, anxiety, and other mental health issues. While yoga is not a substitute for serious mental health condition treatments, it can be incredibly impactful as a supplement in the healing process. Yoga helps regulate the chemical balance and hormones in the body, bringing the mind, body, and soul into harmony. Because yoga teaches us how to manage our mind while strengthening the physical vessel we take through the world every day, yoga can be a crucial catalyst of growth and healing.
How Does Yoga Improve the Mind?
Yoga works by making you more conscious of your mind, allowing you more control over what you keep inside it. For many people, yoga is actually much more about the mind than the body. A lot of people don’t realize the myriad mental benefits of yoga that they keep going back because they start to feel a little better each time. The gentle coaxing of the teacher, the fluidity and flow of movement, and the calmness of the yogic mind all contribute to the health of the mind.
How Does Yoga Affect the Soul?
Yoga’s purpose is to connect you with your soul. The Ego, the sense of one’s self as a physical being in the world, often obstructs our ability to communicate with the soul, which is where the true self is housed. Yoga allows us to raise our health and emotional state to be able to perceive the higher frequency through which our soul communicates with us. Once we establish a clear channel through which to access our soul, we can align our thoughts, motivations, words, and actions to be in harmony with ourselves and the life force that we are all a part of on this planet.
How Does Yoga Improve the Body?
Yoga improves the 10 main systems of your body: skeletal, muscular, circulatory, digestive, urinary, reproductive, lymphatic, nervous, endocrine, and respiratory systems. As if that’s not enough, yoga is designed to bring harmony and balance to the mind, body, and soul. If the mind and soul are not in balance, the body will feel the effects. Adopting a regular yoga practice into your daily life will allow your brain function to improve and your body to detox as well as strengthen itself to defend against illness naturally. Yoga is the science of optimization.
Can Yoga Assist in Weight Loss?
Yes! Yoga stimulates the metabolism and internal organs, regulating digestion. With consistent practice, yoga builds momentum that aids in weight loss in various ways. As your muscles grow and strengthen, your body burns more fat since the fat cells store the energy that is used to feed the muscles. Even breathwork can improve the metabolism because it creates heat in the body, causing the metabolism to speed up. Of course, yoga is not an overnight fix (but what is?) and the results will be greater with more frequent practice.