Many yoga practitioners choose to ignore warm-up exercises before a yoga session, straight away diving into the yoga postures. This dangerous one could result in a yoga injury.
Warm-up before Yoga
Warm-up exercises are important before a yoga session, because it helps the body to prepare itself for the yoga poses. Warm-ups help to improve your blood circulation, makes your muscles elastic, helps to loosen joints, and makes your body more flexible. Thus through warm-up before the yoga session helps you reduce your chances of yoga injury that may arise from stiff muscles or joints.
Walking or Skipping – helps to improve blood circulation and improves overall body flexibility. Have a waking/joking for at least 1 to 2 kilometers or do track mill or skipping to 50 to 100 counts.
Neck loosening Exercises - Many people had tension in their necks, leading to stiffness and tension headaches. Doing these six yoga Neck Exercises eases tension, increases flexibility, and tones up the muscles. Do these exercises slowly and keep your spine straight?
- Exercise 1: First, drop your head back; hold for some seconds, and back straight.
- Exercise 2: Drop your head right forward, hold for some seconds and back straight.
- Exercise 3: Turn your head all the way to the right, hold for some seconds and back to center.
- Exercise 4: Then turn all the way to the left, hold for some seconds and back to center position.
- Exercise 5: Drop your head forward and roll it around in clockwise as wide a circle as possible.
- Exercise 6: Repeat in the opposite direction (counter clockwise).
Shoulder Lifts & Stretching Exercises - Many people had tension in their shoulders, leading to stiffness and arm pain. Doing these shoulder-lifting exercises eases tension, increases flexibility, and tones up muscles in the shoulders. Do these exercises slowly, keep your spine straight and neck relaxed?
- Slowly and firmly raise your right shoulder, and then drop it down.
- Repeat the above with your left shoulders.
- Slowly and firmly raise both your shoulders at once, and then drop them down.
- Sit in a comfortably erect position, hold a strap (make sure the strap is sufficiently long, so that your hands are sufficiently far apart) and straighten your arms forward. Inhale as you move slowly your arms up until they are overhead, and exhale as you bring them down behind you.
- Coordinate these movements with your inhalation/exhalation cycle, making the movement smooth.
Arm Swings with Trunk Rotation – relax your arms by swing it at the sides of your body and bend over at the waist; it brings fresh oxygenated blood to the arms. Slowly swing your trunk from side to side, it relaxes your trunk and makes it more flexible.
Now your body is more flexible, improved blood circulation, and you are ready to do yoga poses. Still before going to any tough yoga poses, you are advice to start with “Surya Namaskar”.