With just a few minutes each day, you can give yourself all you need for some restoration and rejuvenation. Restorative yoga postures have a calming effect and can be used to achieve a gentle emotional release. To nurture yourself this Fall, try these 5 calming and grounding yoga poses to help overcome stress and anxiety.
1. Supta Baddha Konasana (Supine Bound Angle)
The effect: Grounding
Laying on your back, take the soles of the feet together and let your knees fall open wide. Bring one hand to your heart and one hand to your belly. Feel your heart beating against your hand, and the movement of your breath in and out of your body, causing expansion in your belly and chest. Use these sensations to anchor yourself to this present moment.
2. Mountain Brook Pose
The effect: Heart opening
Take a bolster or block and place it lengthwise along your spine, starting at about your mid-shoulder blades to the mid-back. Let your arms splay out and your heart open up towards the sky. Feel the expansion across your chest, stretching and opening the heart space. Open the heart space to let go of what is not serving you, and create more room for what you need.
3. Child’s Pose
The effect: Introspection
Bring the hips over the heels and sit back. Child’s pose creates a gentle stretch in the low back (especially with the knees together), and the hips (especially with the knees apart). The space just above the brow line and in between the brows is where your third eye lives. Pressing your third eye into the mat will help to stimulate introspection, giving you the opportunity to turn your gaze inward.
4. Fetal Position
The effect: Compassion
Lay on your side with your knees bent and use your arm to cradle your head. For more support and cushioning, you can take a block, bolster, pillow, or blanket underneath of your chest. Close your eyes and hold yourself in the first shape that we ever made: foetal position – a safe place that you can always come back to.
5. Legs Up The Wall
The effect: Rejuvenation
Bring your hips next to a wall and swing your legs up along it. Let your arms lay out wherever feels comfortable. With the legs are higher than the heart, this gentle inversion reverses blood flow, and brings nutrients and energy from you legs back up to your heart.
Related: 6 Benefits of Legs Up the Wall Pose
Reap the Benefits
Bringing stillness into your physical body has a resounding effect throughout your body down to the cellular level. Restorative poses help to slow down the parasympathetic nervous, and in turn have a calming effect, allowing for a gentle emotional release. Practice restorative yoga to nurture and take care of yourself this Fall.
