Yoga for Injury and Trauma
After a traumatic event you need to be discerning to determine when to get moving and grooving again. If you are healing from medical issues, it may be appropriate to ask your physician. When your body and spirit are ready for active healing, your intuition will sense that it’s time to get moving. Listen to your inner voice of wisdom!
Therapeutic Yoga Practices to Get You Moving Again
1. Sun Salutations
Sun salutations bring the energetic quality of the sun into your body. Warmth, growth, energy, lightness, upliftedness.
2. Moon Salutations
Moon salutations bring the cooling, divine feminine, dark-side and circular energy. A complement to sun salutations, done as a flow that circles from the first to last pose in a mandala or a round fluid flow. Go as quickly or slowly as your body wants you to.
3. Meditate on Comfort
This practice is a powerful agent to shift perception. Use this meditation to change focus from pain to pleasure. Appropriate for people dealing with chronic or acute physical pain, or a sudden trauma.
4. Yoga Nidra
Yoga Nidra is a deep relaxation that translates to “Yoga sleep,” meant to align the subconscious and conscious mind, allowing practitioners to behave more like their authentic self. By deeply relaxing and accessing the heart’s truest desire, yogis can then walk in alignment with their heart in thought, word, and deed.
5. Savasansa
Regardless of where you are on a personal healing journey, you need rest. That is why you should practice savasana. Savasana may be used to relax, let go and surrender. There are many ways you can do savasana. Try out a few approaches to find what works best for you. You can simply lay flat on the floor on your back, palms up, legs relaxed. You may cover yourself in blankets, or place a heavy blanket folded over the hips and belly, for a more secure feeling. You may choose to prop your legs with bolsters, or legs up the wall, or on a chair.
6. Child’s Pose (on a Bolster)
This pose will melt away stress; lengthen the spine safely for almost anybody, even if you have disc injuries. As with all forward folds, this pose is calming on a physiological level.
In this pose, your spread knees apart on a yoga blanket. The bolster, which is a supportive pillow, holds up the head and chest, keeping the back level, rendering it safe for most disc injuries. The warm herb pillow makes your spine happy as you breathe and relax.
7. Prone Spinal Twist with Bolster
This posture is safe for almost anyone. It combats the discomfort of sitting too much. It loosens up the hips and oblique muscles and opens the chest. It allows practitioners to slow down, which is where much of the magic happens.
In this posture, use a bolster lengthwise on the mat. Lay the chest onto the bolster and allow the hips to be on the mat below. Ensure that both knees and the face are looking in the same direction. Add a folded yoga blanket between the legs to protect the knees and ankles. Aim to take about 10-30 breaths, slowly letting the chest turn more and more toward the bolster. Drift deeply into relaxation before repeating on the second side. Make sure to transition from one side to the other gently and to remain in the pose on the second side for just as long as the first side.
8. Downward Dog on the Wall
Source: Suzanne Wright Yoga
This pose is safe for people with (most) shoulder injuries, pregnant bodies (although most pregnant bodies CAN do a typical downward dog) and for people who can not do weight bearing with the shoulders, to access the therapeutic benefits of spinal lengthening, blood circulation, and the alignment associated with downward dog.
This pose looks like the letter L turned upside down. Hinge your body at a 90° angle at the hips, arms extended. Place your palms and spreading fingers on the wall at shoulder width distance, your wrists and hips at hip height. You know your feet are far enough from the wall when they are flat on the floor facing the wall and, your hands flush with the wall, arms and spine extended. Be sure to bend your knees slightly and draw your tailbone backwards to lengthen the spine and protect the hamstrings.
About the Author
How Yoga Can Help Improve Your Skin
The skin on someone’s face is one of the first things we notice, so it’s only natural that we would desire healthy, beautiful skin. Sadly enough, our skin is also one of the first things to be affected by poor diet and stress. Beyond just covering up with makeup, or religiously applying face creams at night, there are other things that can be done to improve the look and feel of your skin.
Yoga is one of the most effective things we can do to help our skin to stay beautiful and glowing. There are a variety of different poses that will work to your advantage, each with different benefits, but first: what really causes your skin problems?
Skin problems and their causes
Acne is the bane of many individuals – it always seems to be a problem. Luckily, it tends to heal itself and, if treated properly, will not leave any lasting scars.
Oftentimes, a person’s health history has a lot to do with the way his or her skin looks now. If they spent a lot of time outdoors without proper sun protection, or smoked frequently, these things will probably affect their skin negatively.
A poor diet can also cause poor skin: leading to more breakouts and excess oil that clogs pores.
Yoga’s healthy skin benefits
What is yoga actually doing to help improve my skin? Yoga works to improve digestion and circulation. When your body has better blood flow, it naturally produces glowing skin.
Practice doing poses like wind-relieving posture and bow pose, and try alternating nose breathing. All of these practices will aid in digestion. Glowing skin comes with a digestion system that is working properly.
Other yoga poses, such as child’s pose, fish pose and shoulder stand, are also extremely effective in increasing blood circulation throughout your entire body – especially the face and brain – thus stimulating the skin.
Skin loses its elasticity easily, so it is also helpful to do facial exercise which will strengthen and tone the muscles in your face. Stretch your lips and massage your jaw and brows to relieve stress. This practice will also help you to gain elasticity in your face.
What else can I do to get beautiful skin?
Of course yoga is not the only way to improve the look of your skin! In addition to practicing yoga everyday as a regular part of your routine, there are several other habits you can implement into your life so that you can enjoy radiant skin:
1. Drink more water than you think you need. Water flushes out toxins and gives your skin a healthy, lustrous glow.
2. Aim for eight hours of sleep a night. Although this sometimes seems impossible, due to the busyness of life, by being sufficiently rested, you will also look awake and alert. Over time, this will affect the health of your skin in a positive way.
3. Consider getting facials at a spa as part of your regular routine. Facials work to rid your skin of impurities and help to produce a youthful, healthy glow.
By starting to incorporate yoga into your everyday life, you will begin to notice a big difference in the way your skin looks and feels. It will look younger, more vibrant and have a nice glow to it that others will surely notice. When done in unison with the other tips I’ve mentioned, you will be well along your way to having younger-looking skin in just a few weeks!
