You Must Maintain the Balance (Using balancing yoga exercises to calm yourself)

What is this? We are discussing actual yoga now? Well if wonders may never cease, what a novel concept this is.

So in this post I’ll talk about a certain yoga move and how it can help you relax and calm down. There’s no need to worry, this isn’t a complicated move involving a bunch of twists and/or contortions. It’s a really simple move which involves only one thing, balancing yourself on one leg, that’s it. Which leg you use is entirely up to you, the main thing is to stand on only one leg and keep your balance for as long as you possibly can.

In the actual yoga pose (called the tree pose), you’re supposed to stand on one leg and fold the other leg in until the sole of your foot is touching your inner thigh, then you extend your arms up and join them. Here I’ll put a picture so it isn’t too confusing.

Picture By Satheesan.vn (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

So anyway, you make that pose and then you hold it. How long do you hold it? Like I said before, for as long as you possibly can. If you want an exact time limit you can start by trying to hold the pose for 30 seconds; once you get used to that, you can increase the time to 1 minute. You keep increasing the time by 30 seconds and balance yourself for as long as you want to, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 1 hour, it’s up to you.

Why do this? Well believe it or not, it takes a good amount of concentration and focus to balance yourself on one foot for any amount of time. Try it, if you lose focus for even a second you’ll end up losing your balance; in that case, at best you’ll put your other foot back down to stop yourself from falling, or,at worst, you’ll fall over completely and somehow knock over your mothers favourite vase which was 20 metres away (THAT’S THE THIRD TIME THIS MONTH!!!).

So basically, the longer you try to stay on one foot, the more you need to concentrate on standing on one foot, which means you need to put all your attention on just one thing and one thing alone, and that’s basically what meditation is anyway.

Most people can tell you that a good way to calm the mind is through meditation. Just check out this article, or this one, or even this one. In fact here’s an article which talks specifically about yoga poses and how they benefit you (Including the tree pose).

Since meditation calms the mind and since balancing on one foot is pretty much equal to meditation, it makes sense to say that balancing on one foot can calm you down.

So the next time you’re stressed and you want to get away from it, try balancing on one foot. Sure you’ll look silly, but at least you’ll be calm.