5 Detox Yoga Poses
It’s the perfect time to become your healthiest and whole self. You cannot extend to others what you, yourself do not contain. Become your happiest, healthiest, self this year and extend that health and joy to those around you. Don’t only focus on detoxing your physical body, but detox your relationships as well. As we cleanse our physical bodies, it is just as important to surround ourselves with healthy people.
What about your mental clarity? Your spiritual being? Are all these areas cleansed? What steps do you need to take to detox your entire life? Below are five detox yoga poses that can help you detoxify your physical body. We will focus on revolved and inverted yoga asanas as each of these asana families will detoxify your entire system. We will explore three revolved postures and two inversions.
Twists and Revolved Poses
A twist will not only leave you feeling energized and focused but will also give you mental clarity, relieve stress and deep tension and will detoxify your entire system by primarily massaging your internal organs. I like to tell students to think of a dirty washrag being wrung out; This is what we are doing to our systems as we practice revolved postures.
These can be incorporated into almost every yoga posture, whether we’re seated, standing, balancing, prone or in a supine (on your back) position. Revolved postures can be challenging. You will need patience in your journey with twists, as they can be challenging and uncomfortable in the beginning. The more you practice these demanding poses, the better you will become, so embrace where you are and enjoy the journey.
Yoga twists increase the flexibility of your entire abdominal wall including obliques and most back muscles. Inactivity can reduce the range of movement available to all your joints. Twists can assist in mobilizing the joints of your spine by rotating each vertebra gently. Any revolved pose will squeeze the internal organs and encourage the flow of oxygenated blood while eliminating toxins and metabolic waste products. The liver, kidneys, stomach, pancreas, and spleen all benefit from the twisting poses of yoga. Twisting poses can also help reduce abdominal bloating and digestive discomfort.
Revolved Triangle Pose or Parivrtta Trikonasana
Benefits:
- Strengthens and stretches the legs( especially the thighs), knees, ankles and arches
- Stretches and opens the chest, lungs, shoulders, groins and spine
- Increases lung capacity
- Stimulates abdominal organs aiding in digestion and circulation
- Improves alignment of the spine; improving posture and increasing flexibility and mobility of the spine
- Improves balance
- Can be therapeutic for backache, arthritis, infertility, constipation, asthma and sciatica
- Increases stamina and energizes
- Improves concentration, focus, will power and mental clarity
- Relieves, stress, anxiety and depression
Cautions:
If you have a major spinal injury you should avoid this posture. Use caution if you have a headache, high or low blood pressure, an ankle or knee injury, insomnia, or a shoulder injury. If you have a neck injury, keep your gaze either facing forward or towards the ground.
Revolved Chair or Parivrtta Utkatasana
Benefits:
- Rejuvenates the blood system throughout the entire body
- Stimulates and massages the abdominal organs (including ovaries, prostate gland, bladder and kidneys). This improves and relieves digestion issues and tones the abdominal wall
- Strengthens the obliques and transverse abdominal, as well as opens the arm pits and strengthens inner and outer intercostal muscles
- Strengthens and stretches the back muscles, aligns and awakens the spine and improves posture
- Stretches and strengthens the calves, quadriceps, hamstrings, hips, shoulders, chest, feet, ankles, knees and spine; relieves tension in the back, neck and shoulders
- Increases flexibility, lubricates ankle and knee joints and awakens the legs
- Stimulates the heart, improves circulation, respiratory and lymphatic systems
- Therapeutic for mild sciatica, backache, arthritis, osteoporosis, flatulence, menopause, menstrual discomfort and can improve infertility issues
- Reduces stress and anxiety
- Stimulates and energizes the nervous system
- Improves concentration, stamina, mental focus and relieves mild depression
- Relieves mental and physical lethargy and exhaustion
- Calming, centering and balancing; it brings a state of tranquility as well as can be invigorating
Cautions:
Use caution if you have high or low blood pressure; a headache or migraine; low back or shoulder injury; insomnia; a hip, knee or ankle injury, severe asthma, sciatica, degenerated or herniated disk(s); or are pregnant
Half Twist Pose or Ardha Matsyendrasana
Benefits:
- Stimulates and massages the abdominal organs (ovaries, prostate gland, bladder and kidneys), improving and relieving digestion issues, as well as toning the abdominal wall
- Strengthens the obliques and transverse abdominal
- Strengthens inner and outer thighs
- Strengthens and stretches the back muscles, aligns and awakens the spine, improves posture
- Stretches the hips, shoulders, chest and spine, relieving tension in the back, neck and shoulders
- Increases flexibility and lubricates ankle and knee joints, awakening the legs
- Stimulates heart and improves circulation
- Therapeutic for mild sciatica, backache, arthritis, osteoporosis, flatulence, menopause, menstrual discomfort and can improve infertility issues
- Reduces stress and anxiety
- Stimulates and energizes the nervous system
- Improves concentration, mental focus and relieves mild depression
- Relieves mental and physical lethargy and exhaustion
- Calming, centering and balancing. Brings a state of tranquility and can be invigorating
Cautions:
Use caution if you have a low back or shoulder injury; hip, knee or ankle injury; severe sciatica, degenerated or herniated disk; a headache or migraine; or are pregnant.
Inverted Yoga Postures
Inversions are postures that typically have the heart and often the feet, higher than the head. Most inversions stimulate your pituitary gland, promoting a positive state of well-being and rejuvenation. Inversions also benefit the cardiovascular, lymphatic, endocrine and nervous systems while stimulating the lymphatic system which strengthens the immune system and also improves digestion.
Cardiovascular benefits of inversion postures provide more efficient circulation caused by a fresh delivery of blood to the heart. Being inverted also increases blood flow to your head, relieving the heart of some of its duties and can lower blood pressure and heart rate. Your endocrine system is responsible for hormone delivery. Inversions, especially shoulder stands, are recommended for perimenopausal and menopausal women due to the belief that the postures will stimulate the thyroid and parathyroid glands, regulating your metabolism. The benefits to the nervous system during inverted postures include the stimulation of cerebrospinal fluid or CSF, which is the fluid of the central nervous system that flows from the brain to the spinal cord.
Plow Pose or Halasana
Benefits:
- Stimulates abdominal organs, ovaries, prostate gland, bladder and kidneys. This improves and relieves digestion issue and tones the abdominal wall
- Stimulates the thyroid and parathyroid glands which increases metabolism and stimulates the nervous, digestion and respiratory systems
- Strengthens and stretches the back muscles, aligning spine and improving posture
- Opens the shoulders and chest and relieves tension in the back, neck and shoulders
- Awakens the legs
- Stimulates the heart and improves circulation
- Therapeutic for headaches, migraines, backache, menopause discomfort, infertility, insomnia and sinusitis
- Reduces stress and anxiety
- Improves concentration, mental focus and relieves mild depression
- Relieves mental and physical lethargy and exhaustion
- Calming and centering, it brings a state of tranquility and over all well-being
- Invigorating and rejuvenating
Cautions:
If you have asthma or high/low blood pressure, practice with feet on raised props. Use caution if you have severe sciatica or a herniated disk; if you have a back, neck or shoulder injury, if you’re menstruating, if you have glaucoma.
If you’re pregnant but experienced in this posture, you may continue to practice until the third trimester. If you’re inexperienced with plow after becoming pregnant, you should avoid this posture
Tripod Headstand Pose or Salamba Sirsasana
Benefits:
- Stimulates abdominal organs, ovaries, prostate gland, bladder and kidneys. This improves and relieves digestive issues and tones the abdominal wall
- Strengthens the entire musculoskeletal system
- Stimulates the thyroid and parathyroid glands which increases metabolism and stimulates the nervous, digestion and respiratory systems
- Strengthens and stretches the back muscles by aligning the spine and improving posture
- Opens the shoulders and chest and relieves tension in the back, neck and shoulders
- Awakens, stretches and strengthens the entire body and spine
- Stimulates heart and improves circulation
- Therapeutic for headaches, migraines, backache, menopause, menstrual discomfort, infertility, insomnia and sinusitis
- Reduces varicose veins
- Reduces stress and anxiety
- Improves balance and concentration, mental focus and relieves mild depression
- Relieves mental and physical lethargy and exhaustion
- Calming and centering, it brings a state of tranquility and overall well-being
- Invigorating and rejuvenating
Cautions:
Use caution if you have high or low blood pressure; a headache or migraine; a back, neck or shoulder injury, severe sciatica or a herniated disk; and if you’re menstruating; pregnant; have diarrhea; have glaucoma.
About the Author
When Things Get Turned Upside Down: Yoga Inversions
You’re never more alive than when things get turned upside down.
::Malcolm Gladwell
Whether misjudging a headstand and crashing to the floor, fired from our job just when we thought we were up for a promotion or dumped after posting “in a relationship” on our social media status for all to see, nothing gets our attention like being confronted by the unexpected. Suddenly, we find ourselves in a surprising new landscape for which we weren’t prepared. We’re staring down change and wrestling with the fear that we might fall again.
The truth is we’re guaranteed to fall again…and again. Like crashing waves, challenges will crest and crumble whether we’re talking about our headstands or our lives. Personally I’ve fallen many times, certainly out of my headstand, but ultimately into a new headspace.
Inversions in Yoga
To me, inversions are a fantastic living laboratory where we can embrace and move beyond things like fear, expectation, and impatience. All at once upside down needs to become right side up, and we have to surrender our tight grip on what we think we can control. We feel tangible postural balance merge with something deeper.
Inversions are an amazing reminder that how we do one thing is how we do everything. They reveal to us that often things are not going to go as we’d planned, but they just might turn out even better that way.
Making the Leap
Starting a new job or relationship is like the leap of faith it takes to turn upside down in a handstand. Though initially our jump may resemble a first handstand in an unfortunate bra, revealing things we had not hoped for…we learn as we go. Frankly, sometimes the catalysts for our evolution are pretty tits-out, upside down. But, if we move through our raw initiation and prove to ourselves a little at a time that we can do it, before you know it, whatever we were attempting becomes an important part of our personal fabric.
When we try too desperately to control the things we can’t, we become tightly wound in lopsided ways that stunt our growth and leave us miserable.
If we litter our inversions or our lives with expectation, we pin ourselves underneath frustration and impatience, which, in turn, erode the courage and humility it takes to try again.
Outcomes Are Not Guaranteed
The bottom line is we can’t control a guaranteed outcome. Even Kino MacGregor and Doug Swenson have days when they can’t balance in their handstand (albeit annoyingly infrequently). And for all of us, life can feel out of control and out of balance sometimes when it comes to work, deadlines, responsibilities, Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Covered Almonds, time wasted down the rabbit hole of Facebook…you name it.
The Yoga Sutras
In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, abhyasa (perseverant practice) and vairagya (surrendering without expectation of a particular outcome) demand that we resist the trappings of instant gratification our modern society seems to promote. And Pattabhi Jois, the father of Ashtanga yoga, stated,
Do your practice and all is coming.
He didn’t say, “Do your practice and kurmasana (flipping your feet behind your head) is coming instantly.” Nor did he promise results like millions of dollars and six-pack abs. We have to allow incremental progress to eclipse our need to accomplish the finished product. As Ralph Waldo Emerson so famously put it,
Life is a journey not a destination.
What We Can Control
There is one thing we can control, however, and that’s the accountability and integrity with which we show up — on our mat, at our job, for ourselves and for one another. Abhyasa and vairagya ask us to see balance and progress not as a single handstand, but as a part of a larger personal pilgrimage (sadhana). When we look at things through a wider lens, we can see every wobble, challenge and fall as an opportunity to learn and grow. Each time we glean a little bit more wisdom to bring to our next inversion or adventure. And as we do, we start to see that we’re never more alive than when things get turned upside down.
