Category: yoga

The 3 main benefits of the Legs-up-the-wall yoga pose

Posted on by Fiora Touliatou

Article by Fiora Touliatou

Would you like to know a quick tip for refreshing your tired legs, sore back and rebalancing your energy levels after a long day? Practice the Legs-up-the-wall yoga pose every day!

Legs Up the Wall Pose, also known as Viparita Karani in Sanskrit, is a restorative (passive) inverted yoga posture with amazing benefits.

The 3 main benefits of this pose

Firstly, it refreshes your legs especially after long hours of standing up or sitting down (especially if you are jetlagged). This happens as it assists lymph and blood circulation to flow from the legs towards the main body. Therefore, if you have swollen feet, varicose veins and tired legs, this pose will relieve and refresh you, give you a gentle boost, and rebalance your energy levels.

Secondly, it relieves headaches.The introversion of the pose with the head located lower than the feet and legs, wil help the blood to flow better to the heart, will lower the blood pressure and will increase blood circulation to the head. Therefore, it will lower the heart rate, quiet the mind and even relieve any headaches.

Thirdly, it relieves lower back pains.While the pelvis is placed against the floor, the lower back muscles will get stretched out and will be relieved from any pressure. Therefore, the pose will relax the lower back and relieve it from any pains.

How to get in and out of the pose

Start by finding a comfy spot next to a wall. You can either lie with your back on the floor or on a bed. If you choose to lie on the floor, you can place a yoga mat or folded blanket for extra comfort. Next, shimmy your hips as close to the wall as possible. Afterwards, stretch out your legs up the wall until your body is in an L shape. Make any adjustments if needed i.e. place a pillow under your head, rest your arms on your belly, out to the sides or behind your head.

At this point, focus on your breath; the best would be to try the belly breathing technique. For maximum results, try to keep the pose for at least 5 minutes.

To come out of the pose, bend your knees and simply let your legs lower to one side. When you completely lie on your side, push yourself off the floor and slowly sit up. Be careful not rush to get up quickly as your blood pressure has lowered and you might get dizzy!

Belly breathing aka diaphragmatic breathing

Posted on by Fiora Touliatou

Article by Fiora Touliatou

Photo by Metadata

Breathing is the function that keeps us alive. Since ancient times, different spiritual practices have considered breathing the connection of our body-mind-soul and what brings our awareness to our bodies and the present moment.

Diaphragmatic breathing is the proper way to breath. Also known as belly breathing, it is a fundamental bodily function that mammals do instinctively. The process of breathing is facilitated and relies mostly on the thoracic diaphragm, the dome-shaped muscle located just below the lungs and heart, which contracts and expands continually during respiration.

During inhalation,the diaphragm contracts (flattens) so that the lungs fill with air. During this contraction, the diaphragm pushes down the abdominal internal organs causing the belly to expand. During exhalation, the diaphragm relaxes, thus the organs go back to their initial position thus the belly contracts. This bodily function is mostly done involuntarily.

However, because of several circumstances in our daily modern lifestyle, we unfortunately disrupt this natural process and we have developed a shallow breathing habit during which the diaphragm doesn’t move to its full capacity and the breathing is done with expanding the chest instead of the belly. Consequently, this causes several health issues such as stress, anxiety, panic attacks and even depression and severe mental health issues.

So what causes shallow breathing?

First of all, bad posture! For most of us nowadays, daily life involves sitting down in front of a computer. Even while using mobile phones, we tend to lean our hear down to look to our phone instead of lifting the phone higher to our eye level. Bad posture causes the shoulders to drop, the head to lean forward, the chest contracting and putting enormous pressure on the lungs and the heart. Consequently, as we cannot take deep breaths in, we start breathing shallow and faster which causes our heart rate to increase as well as the cortisol (the stress hormones) levels in our body. Moreover, we are inhaling less oxygen so our brain gets less oxygen too which lowers our concentration levels and while increases the possibility of headaches and migraines.As mentioned above, having a habit of shallow breathing creates chronic stress and anxiety disorders, even leading to mental health issues.

To reverse this shallow breathing and bring back the harmony and balance to our body-mind-soul, we simply need to connect to our breath. There are several ways to practice and relearn how to breathe properly. For a daily practice on your own, dedicate 5-10 minutes. Focus on your breath and your belly:

  • take a deep and slow breath in from your nose
  • let your belly rise/expand
  • count for 10
  • take a deep and slow breath out from your mouth
  • let your belly flatten/contract
  • count for 10

This can be practiced any time in the day, especially when you feel stress and you need to reconnect with your body and mind.

If you like to further your practice, you can start with holistic practices such as hatha yoga, meditation, taichi, chikung or/and internal martial arts which teach this principle as an essential practice for our energy system and overall welbeing.

The healing power of silence

Posted on by Fiora Touliatou

Article by Fiora Touliatou

“Listen to Silence. It has so much to say.”

Rumi, 13th century Persian poet
Photo by VisionPic from Pexels

Since ancient times, ascetics from different spiritual practices have spent significant amounts of time in silence and isolation, either with prayer or meditation. Even nowadays, monks and spiritual practitioners retreat themselves for days without socialising or talking to anyone. Throughout history, artists and musicians always had the tendency to spend time on their own in order to connect to inspiration and creativity. Nowadays, many meditation teachers advise that frequent meditative pauses throughout the day have poweful healing effect to our body, mind and soul regardless of our spiritual beliefs. So what is the significance of silence in our lives?

Modern science has proved that noise is destructive to us while silence is healing us. Various studies have shown that noise has a powerful physical yet destructive effect on our brains, because it causes the release of stress hormones. Actually, not only our brain, but our whole energetic field, our aura, receives noise as disruptive sound waves. Even when we are sleeping our body receives noise as intrusive and threatening to our system, therefore it reacts with releasing stress hormones. Consequently, living in a consistently noisy environment causes high levels of stress and can even lead to high blood pressure, heart disease, tinnitus and insomnia.

In 2006, physician Luciano Bernardi studied the physiological effects of noise and music. He surprisingly made a very important discovery. During the study, the participants were not only exposed to noise and music, but also to random stretches of silence in between. These pauses were far more relaxing for the brain of the participants than the relaxing music. In fact, these ‘irrelevant’ pauses became the most important aspect of the study as they had the most powerful and relaxing effect.

In 2011, the World Health Organisation (WHO) stated that the root cause of 3,000 heart disease deaths in Western Europe was due to excessive noise.

All these facts and other important studies and practices are a proof that taking time to switch off is crucial to our wellbeing and our lives in general.

According to the “attention restoration theory”, when we are in silence, the brain can recover some of its cognitive abilities. Moreover, according to Imke Kirste, a Duke University regenerative biologist, two hours of silence per day can initiate cell development in the hippocampus, our brains center of our memory and senses.

Unfortunately, in our modern digital world, our brains have minimal time to switch off as we are exposed to enormous amounts of information. Modern life demands our brains to be in constant attention and consequently a lot of stress. This mental overload leads us into difficulties with making decisions, solving problems and daily functions. However, when we switch off and ideally spend time alone in silence, our brain is finally able to relax, release this constant focus and start its healing process.

To conclude, silence replenishes and nourishes our cognitive powers, raises our concentration levels, increases our motivation and helps us connect with our centres and balances us emotionally. Hence, as ancient spiritual masters always taught, silence is healing as it connects us deeply into ourselves and balances our body, mind and soul. The simple yet ancient practice of silence might be the healing balm we all need to cope with our modern lifestyle.