Yoga Boosts for Strength: Twist your body to rinse out tension
The amount of twisting we do in our daily lives is minimal, yet spinal rotation is essential for keeping your spine healthy and your physiology running smoothly. Twisting postures involve strong abdominal contraction, which helps to strengthen your abdomen and increase circulation to your abdominal organs, particularly your digestive system, stimulating their function. Twisting poses also alternatively stretch and strengthen the deep and superficial muscles that bind your legs to your pelvis and spine, which can help loosen and strengthen your hips and lower back. Energetically, twisting postures stimulate your digestive fire and help you process everything you consume: food, water, and experiences.
Wind up to unwind: Strengthen your upper back
One of the most important things twisting postures do is realign the relationship between the shoulder girdle and the spine. This means that they alternatively stretch and strengthen all the muscles that bind together your arms, shoulder blades, and collar bones to your spine and ribcage, increasing circulation to your upper back and rinsing out tension. If you also add some arm binds and weight-bearing postures on your hands, you will turbocharge the effect of your twists and make your upper back strong and supple.
In this yoga practice, we increase the load on the upper body and progressively deepen the twists to culminate in the twisting Chair pose, which requires strength, stability, and flexibility in the entire body. We also use twists, breathing practices, and Brahma mudra to move the energy toward the center of the body and enhance our ability to process food, water, and experiences. Give it a try and see how it feels!
Your spine is the main conductor of vital energy. It facilitates the movement of energy throughout the body, so moving your spine in different directions helps pump the energy throughout your body.
