Easy Yoga Moves for Beginners: Basic Poses

America’s taken to yoga like never before. Yoga has become the hottest thing today. There are countless people who have benefited from yoga. No wonder everyone right from Hollywood celebrities to judges, senators everyone has taken to yoga. The very principle of yoga is to look at the body inside out. It aims to create a union between the mind, body and soul. It aims to give a holistic view of the problems in the body. There are many who have claimed to have gained peace with oneself after practicing yoga.

However, it can be a daunting task for those looking to begin practice yoga. The funny names given to the different poses (or asana as they are called) help you to stretch and tone muscles while relaxing the mind and the body. With yoga, you tune your body to come out of the fight or flight response and respond by relaxing.

Easy Yoga Moves for Beginners

However this is not an easy task, especially when the mind, body and soul are trained to respond either by fight or flight. Yoga is more of surrender than struggle. For those learning the basics, here are a few moves for you to go through. Mind you these are just a brief description of the different moves and they should always be performed under the guidance of a yoga guru (master).

Basic yoga for beginners can be classified under different groups based on convenience. For those looking for relaxation, you could try the

    * Shava Asana (also called as the corpse position) – This pose, relaxes the mind and body. To perform this asana you need to lie in a supine position and keep both the legs apart from each other, similar to a corpse. This asana is very good t rejuvenate your mind.
    * Bal Asana (also called as child’s pose) – This asana derives its source from the way a child sleeps -carefree. It is ideal to take rest and relax your body.
    * Yoga Nidra (or conscious deep sleep) – This is an asana where you get to enjoy the benefits of deep sleep even when your mind is operating. It is extremely rejuvenating and manages to awaken your subconscious mind.

Yoga postures for meditation:

    * Padma Asana (Lotus Pose) – In this pose, the body takes the shape of a lotus, and is the ideal pose for meditation. However this could be a little difficult to beginners, and for those who are inflexible. But with practice, it is quite easy and effective.
    * Vajra Asana (or diamond pose) – Vajra also means thunderbolt in Sanskrit and effective practice of this asana is believed to make the body stronger and harder like the thunderbolt.
    * Sukh Asana (also called easy pose)-As the name says, such asana is mean to be comfortable and is the best pose that can be easily done by everybody.

Among asana’s that are practiced by standing are Kona Asana, Trikona asana and Tada asana.

Remember whatever the asana that you perform, they’re to be performed at least 3 hours after your meals. One or two hours before sunrise are the best time to perform yoga. These poses should be performed on the hard floor, with a yoga mat or rug for support.