The Art of Yoga and Relaxation: Intensity and Relaxation.

Yoga has widely become accepted as a very effect manner of stress relief and management. The fact that many reputable scientific and medical sources, such as the Mayo Clinic, have come to accept and recommend the use of Yoga as a form of anxiety and stress management shows that there is a scientific grounds to the philosophy of yoga. By removing your self from the stress of every day trivialities and focusing on your body functions much of the stress that builds up starts to ebb away, the more rigorous and physically demanding the poses, the easier it is to lose yourself in the moment. In my Yoga class we have moved into poses that require more than physical ability they also demand will power. One pose that is a prime example of this is crow pose, in which you balance on your arms with you body tucked almost into a ball, naturally if you have more upper body strength it will be easier to hold this pose, it is not much easier, it requires muscles throughout the body; core, arms, legs, etc. Putting all of this together require a much larger amount of mental exercise than most of the poses attempted in our Yoga class. Despite the challenges that this pose presents, I find it to be one of the poses that I feel the most relaxed after performing.