I love that The Huffington Post dedicates an entire section to a healthy lifestyle and that the tag line for this section is “Less Stress, More Living.”  I definitely need to incorporate that philosophy into my life a bit more these days.

Phew.

As part of my effort to reduce stress in my life, I committed to a 30 day unlimited pass at a local yoga studio, Yoga Bhoga.  I had high hopes.  I absolutely loved the classes I took as I began the journey at the beginning of May.  However, as luck would have it, a variety of reasons began to prevent me from keeping my month long commitment.  I hate to refer to these hindrances as excuses, as the term simply makes me cringe.  I suppose I suffered some setbacks in life, that prevented me from taking the steps I needed to take after work each day to get me to class.
Without going into incredibly gory detail about things – I ended up severely cutting my finger – ER visit and a cut all the way to the bone – this provided a huge roadblock to a variety of things in my daily routine.  Boy, we certainly do use that opposable thumb (and entire hand) for a whole lot of things – grooming is one of those things with high importance!  And, I have been battling a series of ear infections, cough and cold, which then developed into a full blown case of the flu.  Yes, likely excuses and quite a sob story.

The purpose of my words today, though, has nothing to do with what holds me back though, but with how to propel myself forward – away from anxiety.  AND, apparently there are 10 very specific yoga poses that can help me to do just that.  Hooray!

As I scrolled through the slide show, the thought certainly occurred to me that a few of these poses have actually caused quite a bit of anxiety for me in my past attempts to “attain” them.  I will shift my mindset, however, from here on out, and remind myself that, indeed, forcing myself into a headstand is CALMING my nerves!

Legs-Up-the-Wall-Pose-Viparita-Karani

Legs Up the Wall, though, will forever be a favorite stance of mine – whether it be a formal yoga move or not.  It just feels pretty darn good.
Viparita Karani.
It even sounds good.

Yoga For Anxiety: 10 Poses To Reduce Stress And Support Mental Health (PHOTOS).

One thought on “Legs Up the Wall – Viparita Karani”

  1. Miss Ashley,

    How did you cut your hand? Are you healing? I’m sorry to learn about this; you know how vain I’d like to be about my (knobby-knuckled Granny-fingered) hands. I hate the inconvenience, not to mention the pain of a bad cut.

    Tom’s mother had three bands to her wedding ring. She wanted each of the daughters-in-law to have one. I gladly took the smallest one (five little stones) since, face it, I have more nice jewelry than the others. I took it to Johannes Hunter to have it sized for the pinky of my left hand. It was a size 8+ for Mom’s ring finger; it needs to be a 1.75 for my little finger. We’re going to slice it between diamond #2 and #3 to make it an off-set wrap ring. There’s just no other way for me to wear it without risking a diamond popping due to the stress of bending so far.

    I guess I came back to yoga after all, didn’t I?

    Hugs, Tina

    P.S. We got a kick out of the bacon post.

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