Physical benefits of Svaroopa Yoga
Tension in the human body follows familiar patterns. Muscles attach to bones throughout your body and allow you to move. But there is more to understand about muscles – they run around and through all of your boney structures; nerves run through the muscles; blood vessels pass through the muscles; and the muscles wrap around all of your internal organs; in fact, the outer layers of your internal organs are muscles. And muscles overlap and intertwine with each other. So, tension in one area creates a domino effect of tension throughout your body.
This domino effect can be seen in a vast number
of physical conditions and problems.
The tension can:
- Affect your structure by pulling bones into places they shouldn’t be or even reshaping the bones themselves;
- Cause compression on nerves, which can cause pain or burning sensations, or impact the ability of messages to travel through the nervous system to all the glands, internal organs, muscles, your brain, etc.;
- Compress internal organs, causing things like poor digestion or elimination;
- Restrict blood flow and circulation
- resulting in areas of the body that are frequently cold, feel tingly, swell due to pooling of blood, or even turn blue due to the tourniquet effect of the tight muscles squeezing the blood vessels.
- Negatively affect bone density due to reduced blood supply (which carries nutrients) to your bones;
- Result in sluggish lymphatic flow, which means that your immune system won't function as well as it could.
You can see from the brief description above, that muscle tension can have vast and wide-ranging effects on your body, beyond the aches and pains many of us associate with muscle tension. Examples of symptoms of these tensions include: bulging or herniated discs, sciatica, scoliosis and other spinal curvature, headaches and migraines, becoming shorter as we age, constipation, acid reflux, breathing difficulties, frequent colds, osteoporosis, knee problems.
Unraveling these tensions has an effect on your whole body
Unraveling these tensions, starting with the core muscles, the deepest and often most restricted muscles in the entire body, can have an expansive domino effect on the whole body and all of your systems. This is called “Core Opening”. While a complete list of physical benefits of Svaroopa yoga could be almost endless, below are some of the more common ones:
Relief from:
- Low back pain
- Upper back pain
- Shoulder pain and problems
- Hip/pelvis pain
- Many spine or disc problems
- Constipation
- Neck pain and misalignment
- Wrist/hand problems
- Arthritis symptoms
- Knee pain and problems
- Foot pain and discomfort
Improved:
- Digestion
- Breathing
- Circulation
- Muscle response
- Bone strength and density
- Flexibility
- Posture
- Balance
- Comfort while sleeping, sitting, walking, etc.
- Body awareness
- Health
- Vitality
For all of the reasons above, and more, Svaroopa yoga can be a wonderfully therapeutic style and has extraordinary physical benefits. Even practicing just once a week can begin to change things that you might have thought couldn't.
If you'd like to see change in your body more quickly, simply do more - a daily home practice is ideal. Even with as little as 15-20 minutes a day, you'll see amazing results. You can learn a home practice in certain yoga classes (usually called "daily practice") or, in private session. Private sessions offer the additional benefit of being able to help you learn the precise alignments more quickly, as well as customize a sequence that works best for your body.