10 yoga stretches you can do at the office
1. Mountian Pose (Tada-sana)
Ta-da! See, yoga isn’t so hard and you already know the basics.
Tips: Stand up tall. Imagine your spine is like a chain that you’re trying to create as much space as you can in between the links. Relax your shoulders and take a few deep breaths.
Benefits: Improves posture, groundedness, stability and confidence.
Liana and Maddie demonstrating crescent pose
2. Standing Crescent Pose (Indudalasana)
Tips: From Mountain Pose, clasp your wrist above tour head and bent gently to the side. Look up to the sky and breathe in to your side ribs.
Benefits: Stretches and opens the sides of the body and improves core body strength, balance and concentration.
Liana and Mon in Utanasana
3. Standing Forward Fold (Uttanasana)
Tips: From Mountain Pose, fold forward as far as you can. Don’t stress about touching your toes, resting your hands on your shins is still giving you all the benefits from the pose.
Benefits: Lengthens the spinal column and stretches the backs of the legs and the back muscles. Personally this one really helps me reduce lower back pain.
Mon doing a High Crescent Lunge
4. High Crescent Lunge
Tips: Distribute your weight evenly between both legs and stand on your back toes like your wearing stilettos. This will help you balance. To intensify the stretch, tuck your tailbone under and you’ll really start to feel this across the front of your hip.
Benefits: Opens the hips and chest and stretches the psoas muscle. This is the muscle that wraps from your lower back to the inside groin. My physio says one of the reasons I get lower back pain is from having a tight psoas muscle (which is apparently common for desk workers) so this is a good one.
Jarrad wrapping those limbs up in chair eagle pose
5. Chair Eagle Pose (Garudasana)
Tips: Try not to hunch forward or lift your shoulders. Work towards relaxing your shoulders down and away from your ears with your should blades not poking out. Raising your elbows will increase the intensity of this stretch and keeping them close to your body will make it a bit easier so only go as far as is comfortable.
Benefits: Stretches shoulders and upper back and is said to improve concentration.
Penny’s the pro at the reverse prayer
6. Reverse Prayer (Paschim Namaskarasana)
Tips: If this looks impossible, take the variation of holding opposite elbows behind your back.
Benefits: Opens the abdomen, allowing deeper breaths, stretches the upper back, shoulder joints and pectoral muscles. Over time this will help reduce slouching and reverse the effects of hunching over our desks.
Liana in a seated spinal twist
7. Seated Spinal Twist (Ardha Matsyendrasana)
Tips: Like Mountain Pose, this is all about creating space in the spine. Use your inhale breath to sit tall and create space in between the vertebrae, then on your exhale, twist.
Benefits: Twisting is a way to cleanse and reduce stress within the abdominal area, resulting in better digestion. Twisting also helps to enhance lung capacity and strengths and stretches the back muscles and can provide relief from back pain caused by slouching at your desk.
Mon demonstrating seated side angle pose
8. Chair Extended Side Angle (Utthita Parsvakonasana)
Tips: If you can’t reach the floor, placing your hand on your shin or knee is also totally ok. The twist should come from the base of your spine. Try and keep the shoulders relaxed and the chest as open as possible.
Benefits: See benefits of twisting above. This variation is also heaps easier than the full standing version.
Chair Pigeon – yep this is yoga too.
9. Chair Pigeon (Eka Pada Rajakapotasana)
Tips: The higher your top knee is, the easier the stretch will be. If you’re not feeling anything, try gently pushing your top knee down so the leg is parallel to the floor. Still not feeling it? Lean forwards.
Benefits: Do you sometimes feel like your butt has gone to sleep? This is guaranteed to wake it up. It’s also great for stretching the psoas, relieving tension in the hip and alleviating sciatic pain. Open hips also release the negative feelings and energy from your system since stress, tension and anxiety are often stored there. Note – not so good to practice this one if you’re wearing a short skirt.
Penny demonstrates Makarāsana and Liana Shavasana
10. Crocodile Pose (Makarāsana) or Corpse Pose (Shavasana)
For when you’ve had enough and want all your clients to hell. Just joking – we love you!
Tips: Tell you boss you’re doing yoga and that you’ll be so much more productive if you were allowed a 5 minute shavasana every afternoon.
Benefits: Crocodile Pose promotes relaxation of the lower back and both poses help reduce stress and anxiety.
Originally published on benchcreative.com.au as "Celebrating Steptember with 10 yoga stretches you can do at the office".