Women have to keep many balls up in the air – at home, work and socially. Practicing yoga regularly can help them balance their lives and feel empowered in the process.
From adolescence to pregnancy, menstruation and menopause, regular practice can help balance hormones, making symptoms much more bearable. Wellness Haven Yoga offers a range of yoga classes for women.
Hormone Balance
Hormones are one of the mechanisms that make our bodies function as they do, and they can also make it difficult to conceive or stay pregnant. Woman yoga focuses on maintaining a healthy hormonal balance. This can be achieved through exercises that stimulate the endocrine glands and improve their function.
For instance, poses that encourage abdominal muscles strength and stability, like prasarita padottanasana (wide-stance forward bend), improve the flow of blood to the ovaries, which helps women with PCOS and hormone imbalance. Other asanas that help with ovarian health include ustrasana, which strengthens the pelvic muscles and aids estrogen production; and shuffle pose, which increases blood circulation to the ovaries and relieves back discomfort.
Woman yoga can also help reduce cortisol levels, which are associated with stress and weight gain. This is because the practice of focusing on breathing and relaxation eases stress and calms the mind, which in turn reduces the amount of cortisol released.
Stress Reduction
Women are always on the go, juggling multiple roles and responsibilities. While this is a positive thing, it can be taxing on their bodies. In order to keep themselves afloat in this stressful world, they need to find ways to relax.
Yoga can be a great way to reduce stress. One study found that participants had a significant decrease in perceived stress levels after taking a 90-minute yoga class. Another study found that regular yoga practice improves the ability to drift off to sleep at night, which can also lower stress levels.
In addition to reducing stress, yoga can also help you develop better muscle tone. This can increase your overall strength, which may make it easier to cope with stressful situations. In fact, yoga is often recommended as a complement to anxiety counseling, because it helps reduce the amount of cortisol in the body, which can cause feelings of stress and anxiety. As such, it’s an ideal form of exercise for women who want to stay healthy and strong at all stages of life.
Relief from Menstrual Cramps
Women can experience a variety of symptoms during their period, including cramping. Yoga can help ease these pains by promoting deep breaths, which increase oxygen circulation throughout the body. This, in turn, helps relieve moderate to intense pain caused by menstrual cramps.
Yoga is a natural remedy that can alleviate many health issues. It can help reduce back pain, improve sleep, and decrease stress. It also promotes a healthier lifestyle by encouraging physical activity and eating healthy foods.
During the time of the month, try practicing Revolved Triangle Pose to ease menstrual cramps and other symptoms of PMS. This pose is similar to other seated twisting postures and helps to support the tissue in the pelvic region while stimulating blood flow, which can help with menstrual cramping. For added comfort, you can use a block under your bottom.
Self-Love
Self love means nourishing yourself (in yoga terms this includes ahimsa, respecting the body’s needs), but it also means setting boundaries and challenging yourself. This is what yoga teaches in its dual-pronged approach to healing: svadhyaya, self study (knowing how you nourish and calibrate your nervous system), and tapas, discipline (challenging the body to grow strong).
Women transform through life in cycles and spirals – from adolescence, through childbirth and menstruation, to menopause. When supported through these transitions, yoga can help women thrive.
This is why the majority of yoga practitioners are women: women’s bodies and psyches are inherently more flexible than men’s. I have watched countless yoginis move within inches of those beside them in a graceful, coordinated manner that is not the case for many men.