Yoga to counteract sitting too much
So many of us find ourselves sitting all day at a computer. It’s very likely the reason why yoga students complain of tight hips and back pain, we find ourselves sitting a lot more, moving our body less and stressing our mind more. When we remain seated for hours at a time, especially with a bad posture, tightens and shortens the muscles along the front of the trunk and back of the legs: the hip flexors, hamstrings, chest muscles and abdominal muscles all remain in a contracted state for many hours. Prolonged sitting also puts significant stress on our low back as well as our hips.
Sitting could be considered the new smoking. There’s no doubt that sitting for prolonged periods can have a detrimental effect on our health, we were not built to sit all day.
Yoga Sutra 2.46, Sthira Sukha Asanam, refers to finding steadiness and ease in your seat. Though this sutra is intended to apply to your posture during meditation, it’s also applicable to the way we experience every aspect of our lives. If we can create a sense of ease and steadiness in our most frequent posture, imagine what this could do to establish a more constant sense of equilibrium in our bodies and minds.
Although our yoga sequence for sitting all day is designed to remedy the physical repercussions of working at a desk, on a deeper level, it can also bring steadiness and ease to the way we approach all our daily postures. Yoga transcends far beyond the movements we make during our practice.
Categorised as: Blog