5 Yoga Poses to Relieve College Stress

Stress is a huge part of college life. Every day we have to time manage school work, jobs, internships, extracurricular activities, and of course, social lives. Regardless of your scenario, there's a way to prevent becoming overwhelmed.

In an article for Her Campus, Maddie Bourque reveals five yoga poses that will help you relax and maintain your every day stresses.

Every collegiette™ has a massive "TO-DO" list (or a few) taped to the fridge or tucked in a planner.

TO DO:

Finish homework (Actually...Start the homework...)
Call parents back!
PAY BILLS! (Last month's too)
Revisit New Year's Resolutions...
CLEAN!

Collegiette™ life can be, in a word, exhausting. And on the weekend, rest escapes us as we have piles of books to read and miles to run at the gym. After catching up on last week's Grey's Anatomy on a Sunday morning, we begin to realize the unproductive nature of our day and a panicky and sickly feeling slowly begins to surface that causes our palms to sweat, our faces to break out, and our fingers to fidget. This can only mean one thing: stress. It's an unavoidable side effect of collegiette™ life but rest assured, there are ways to help suppress this dizzying, nauseating, hair-raising experience. By using a few yoga moves, it is possible to give yourself at least a few minutes of you time every day, which is essential to keeping a level head. Practicing simple yoga poses and breathing techniques can assure that you'll have at least a few minutes to sort through the depths of your frizzed out mind while you're on the move.

1. Scenario: Hungover on a Sunday morning. Pose: Chair Twist.

There is nothing worse than waking up feeling nauseous on a Sunday morning when you know you have a paper to write. Instead of laying in bed for the majority of the day, try a chair twist to give yourself an internal massage and be on the road to recovery!

• Start with the right side of your body facing the back of the chair and hold the sides of the chair back with your hands at shoulder height. Make sure your hips and torso are facing forward and your shoulders are relaxed down.

• As you inhale, press your sitting bones into the seat of the chair and the top of your head toward the ceiling.

• As you exhale, twist to the right from the base of your spine. Stretch your torso as you did previously before the first twist, and on your next exhale, twist up the middle of your spine without pulling on the chair as you twist.

• On your final exhale twist up through your upper spine. Turn your head to look over your right shoulder and hold the pose for about a minute. Slowly return to your starting position.
• Repeat these same steps on the other side. Twisting massages your abdominal organs and improves digestion!

2. Scenario: At the library looking over next week's assignments. Pose: Reverse Prayer

It is important to give yourself a second to calm down and compose yourself. Reverse Prayer stretches your wrists and shoulders (which are probably tense and achy) while allowing you to breath and work through those knots in your neck.

• To start, bring your hands to your lower back with your palms facing each other.

• Bring your hands as close together as you can in a prayer position and bring your fingertips up your back as far as you can. Hold for about 30 seconds (or however long feels good!) while concentrating on your breath. For those 30 seconds, allow yourself to forget about the work that is not getting done and the waiting texts that need a reply. It's important to give yourself just a few minutes a day of breathing exercises! Feel refreshed? We thought so.

Check out the rest of the article at Her Campus.com!

 

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Comments

[Chuck Bluestein]

06:33 PM on 03/15/2011

The link has a place with the picture of the reverse prayer pose. I had not seen that before, but it looks really good. There is a lot of stress in college. I was just reading how yoga improves mood:

"Research that was published in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine suggests that practicing yoga has the ability to improve mood and reduce anxiety."

Then I was also reading how the pentagon is paying for soldiers to learn yoga to recover from war wounds and PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder).