Ms. Namita Nayyar
With International Yoga Day, approaching the theme this year is “Yoga for Health – Yoga at Home”. Share five yoga exercises you advise people to improve immunity and oxygen.
Ms. Namita Piparaiya
I think it is wonderful that more and more people across all age groups are practicing Yoga at home. It is a powerful practice that is highly versatile and benefits everyone.
In terms of improving immunity and oxygen levels, the number 1 technique is breath awareness. This will set a strong foundation for advanced pranayama practices. Breath awareness can be enhanced by breathing mindfully, using props like the yoga belt, or by placing your hands across the belly, ribs, and collar bones sequentially.
The second would be to practice Sun Salutations or Vinyasa-based dynamic yoga practices that are energizing and invigorating. This helps strengthen the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, which is essential for strong lungs.
Third, add a variety of Yoga back bending poses like Cobra, Bow, Wheel, or even standing backbends. This helps counterbalance the forward stooping posture that we develop over hours of computer work or phone use. A more upright posture means better breathing capacity, and your lungs get more oxygen every time you breathe.
Fourth, add forward bends to help calm down the nervous system and make your breath naturally rhythmic. These include postures like Child Pose and Standing or Seated forward bends. Even lateral stretches like Triangle Pose can be included here. These postures are also great to do before meditation as they help minimize distractions due to a wandering mind.
Fifth, twisting postures will help you stretch and release the muscles in the torso, which will ease the breathing process. They are also great for the spine and the nervous system. Postures like Half Lord of the Fishes Pose, Supine Twist, and Twisted Lunge are some options in this category.
Ms. Namita Nayyar
Many people lookup for “Yoga for weight loss”, poses you suggest for the same, and diet tips
Ms. Namita Piparaiya
Yoga can certainly help with weight loss and in a very sustainable way as well. But first, it’s essential to understand that weight loss is a function of three things – Diet, Exercise, and Non-exercise activity (aka NEAT, it refers to how active you are during the day outside of your workouts). And out of these three, it is our Diet that is the primary contributor to our weight. As no amount of exercise can outrun our dietary choices.
Yoga and Diet
Yoga helps with dietary choices. It is a stress management practice that calms down the nervous system, regulates your hormones, enables you to find mental peace, and makes you more mindful. This strengthens mind-body awareness, reduces food cravings, and frees our intuition. As a result, your dietary habits start to change. You can differentiate between real hunger and emotional hunger. And an unhealthy relationship with food starts to disintegrate. Let me share my experience; before I started Yoga, I used to have very strong sweet cravings; there would always be a slice of cake or a pastry in my fridge. It was somewhere along my Yoga journey that I realized I hadn’t felt like eating a cake for months! And this is the experience that a lot of people have when they start Yoga and meditation.
Yoga and Exercise
While Yoga was traditionally a pre-meditation practice, it has today evolved to include many different methods and styles that would qualify as a low to a medium-impact exercise routine. This is suitable for today’s fast-paced lifestyle where people have limited time for exercise. So, in terms of weight loss, earmark at least 60 minutes for your yoga practice; out of this, 30-40 minutes can be reserved for moderately intense Hatha or Vinyasa Yoga and remaining time for breathwork and meditation. Include postures like Chair Pose and all Warrior Poses. Include more strengthening postures like Chaturanga and Vasisthasana to integrate the whole body. Practice Restorative Yoga at least once a week or more as per your needs.
This leaves us with NEAT, which means don’t spend long hours sitting at your desk. Stay active, get up often, do errands, open the door when it rings, fill up water bottles, get up and look outside the window, and so on. These little activities during the day eventually add up and contribute not only to weight loss but a host of other health benefits.
Ms. Namita Nayyar
You are a certified Hath Yoga practitioner, is it different from Vinyasa, also favorite hath Yoga poses for building flexibility & preventing back pain
Ms. Namita Piparaiya
Yes, I’ve had extensive training in Hatha Yoga, and over the years, I’ve incorporated other styles into my teaching. I like to teach Hatha, Vinyasa, and Restorative classes in a week. That gives a well-rounded practice for the entire mind-body complex.
Hatha Yoga focuses more on holding postures in stillness; it is, therefore, more grounding and allows you to experience a posture in greater detail. The more time you spend in a pose, the more you understand it. It also gives you time to focus on your breath. In fact, in the Mysore Style of practice, Hatha yoga postures are held by counting our breaths rather than keeping time. For instance, the teacher may ask you to hold Chair Pose for nine breaths, or Cobra pose for 12 breaths, and so on.
Vinyasa is a more dynamic form of Yoga – you move faster from one posture to another, making seamless transitions. Sun Salutations are a form of Vinyasa. Similarly, several yoga flows can be created by combining different poses. Just like you repeat sun salutations, Vinyasa flows are repeated multiple times in a class. So, even though you don’t hold the posture for very long, you repeat it multiple times.
When it comes to flexibility and back pain, there are a few muscles that you need to stretch and a few others that you need to strengthen.
Hip flexors need to be stretched, achieved by Crescent Moon Pose (Anjaneya Asana) or Low Lunge (Ashwasanchalanasana). The upper back is stretched by postures like Extended Child Pose (Nikunjasana) and Cobra Pose (Bhujangasana). Deep backbends like Camel, Wheel, or Bow pose to stretch the entire front of the body, including the hip flexors, upper back. Strong core and shoulder would also support back pain, so postures like Plank Pose (Phalakasana), Yoga Bicyldes, Hollow Holds, Dynamic Bird Dog (Sharabha Kriya), or Boat Pose (Naukasana), which is a great hip flexor strengthener, can be included