Yoga can have many benefits. Whether you need to improve your body, calm your mind, or cleanse your soul, you can find the answer in various yoga poses, techniques, and crafts, some of which can help you immensely. One such yoga technique is the inversion.
The top five benefits of yoga inversions are:
- Better Blood Circulation
- Greater Flexibility
- A Decrease in Soreness and Muscle Pain
- An Increase in Your Overall Alertness
- A Greater Sense of Peace of Mind
With benefits like these, you can see why inversion is such a popular technique for yoga beginners and experts. Anyone can learn the inversion, and anyone can significantly benefit from it.
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What Makes a Pose "An Inversion" in Yoga?
One of the most helpful poses is the “inversion,” a form where your heart and hips are over your head. Many yoga inversion poses incorporate this technique, and it might be easier for you to achieve than you may think.
An inversion is achieved when the heart is higher than the head, meaning you’re upside down. This could be achieved through a handstand, a stretch, or a twist of your body. What makes an inversion unique is that it’s a technique that yoga inversions for beginners can use when they’re starting. Still, it can be carried over the more they advance and become capable of techniques of incredible difficulty that they can eat themselves into as they progress.
Once you master the inversion, you’ll get to apply it to your current routine and explore the boundless possibilities in which you can use it. An inversion is versatile enough to find a place with even the most experienced practitioners, as research has found that people who practice yoga are often healthier than those who don’t.
What's an Example of a Yoga Pose That's an Inversion?
You might have seen an inversion before, even if you didn’t know the name; after all, many inversions aren’t labeled as such but fall under the same category. For example, a handstand is inverted when performed correctly because your body is inverted.
An inversion differs depending on the pose, but the same principles usually apply. The process involves stretching your body while keeping your back straight. You could lean against a wall for some stretches or start on the ground and dip your body upwards.
Some familiar yoga poses that are inversions are:
- A forward folding pose: standing straight up and touching your toes. This is a ubiquitous pose that almost everyone has done at some point, whether in gym class (or specifically a yoga inversion class) or before going on a long run.
- A dolphin pose: where you start in a plank position and bring your arms closer to your chest while moving your belly and rear upwards. This intermediate exercise can be an excellent workout for your arms and core, helping you stretch and relieve tension.
- A handstand: where you invert your whole body and stand upside down. This more advanced technique requires more practice and upper body strength to pull off safely. If you’re a beginner, have a spotter to avoid risk. Consider taking a handstand course for further skill building.
As you can see, an inversion is a broad category that can come in many forms and suit many different skill sets. Performing inversions can be beneficial, but make sure you’re taking care to avoid unnecessary risks of injury, especially for more complex techniques.
What are 5 Benefits of Doing Yoga Inversions?
Inversions in yoga have many benefits that are both noticeable and subtle. By the time you master an inversion, you’ll likely have been performing yoga for a bit, and thus, you’ll have already seen some changes, which are only amplified by the benefits that inversions can bring you.
On and off the yoga mat, you’ll find more significant benefits in your daily life. You can notice more energy throughout the day, better sleep at night, and a more calming state of mind, even in stressful situations. Inversions can be a great way to lay the groundwork for improvements in all areas of life.
One aspect to note, however, is safety. Inversions might not be a good idea if you are in a packed room or around other objects. Especially for beginners, you might risk falling over and hurting yourself or others around you if you perform any of the exercises wrong. Safety should always be you’re number one priority; thankfully, within versions, there are plenty of different styles, variations, and techniques you can do to match your skill level and can help you train yourself until you are ready for the more advanced techniques.
The Top 5 Benefits of Doing Inversions
The best advantages you’ll see doing inversions are better blood circulation in your body, increased flexibility, increased peace of mind, increased general alertness, and decreased stiffness and muscular discomfort.
Experts agree that yoga can have many long-term benefits and decrease your risk of issues like arthritis later on in life, as well as improve your body in the current day. Yoga can be an avenue for many techniques and crafts like inversions, and you’ll find it easy to learn these techniques and apply them to your routine.
1. Better Blood Circulation
Yoga can help relax your body while also stretching and working it out. This, in turn, can improve your blood circulation by pumping more oxygen into your brain. With the increased blood circulation, you’ll notice that you even start to look different because your skin cells will be replenished, your face will have more of a glow, and you’ll feel better as the increased circulation helps dispose of wasteful cells in your system.
Better blood circulation can affect all areas of your body, from helping you feel more alert in your brain to helping supply nutrients to the rest of your body. Good circulation can also prevent harm to kidneys and heart muscle and keep your body safe from harm.
Inversions are beneficial in this case, even compared to other yoga exercises. When we turn ourselves upside down, we allow our blood to flow to vital areas like our brain and heart more efficiently, which can help the critical fluids travel faster without much obstruction.
2. Become More Flexible
The most significant benefit to stretching is, of course, flexibility. What acts like inversions are doing is that they train our body to move in uncommon directions without pain or stiffness. Our joints aren’t used to anything like this, but with constant practice, you’ll find that turning your body in all sorts of ways can be just as easy and natural as any other motion you do.
Stretching can keep your muscles active and ready to move without obstruction, so athletes often stretch before a workout to perform all of their necessary motions without risking pulling their joints or injuring themselves.
3. Do Away with Soreness
One great benefit is that you’ll be significantly less sore after a workout because of stretching-like inversions. Soreness happens because when we work out, we’re tearing a muscle, and resting puts it back together more robust than before. When we stretch, we’re relieving the stress muscles are going through, and you’ll find that you’ll get rid of soreness without losing your gains from working out.
Inversions can help speed up this process because you’re performing an extensive range of motion when you stretch. Since this causes excellent blood flow and circulation, your body doesn’t need to work as hard to restore torn muscles; thus, it will heal you faster.
4. Energize your Day
Another significant benefit of inversions is that you’ll see and notice all day. You’re going to notice that you have a lot more energy. Maybe you need a Big gulp of coffee to get through the day, or perhaps you don’t enter peak performance until your days are already halfway over. Thankfully, there’s a way to alleviate this naturally: stretching and performing exercises like inversions.
This happens because of the previously mentioned increase in blood flow to your brain. The energy we usually feel comes from how active our brains are and how quickly and effectively they can process information, which is generally less effective when we’re tired. By performing inversions, we’re helping the process by pumping more oxygen into our brains, allowing them to remain more active. When we would usually feel tired, our brains instead get the signal that it’s time to get to work.
5. Peace of Mind
Yoga is considered a form of meditation, which means it can help relax your body as well as your mind. When you perform exercises like inversions, you are putting your body in a more relaxed state which can help you quiet your mind and focus on your breathing and stretching. This is why many turn to yoga as a form of controlling their mental state to achieve a greater peace of mind.
Practices and habits like these are effective in reducing stress, calming anxiety, and focusing your attention and concentration on singular things and helping you to note unnecessary or harmful thoughts. When you perform inversions, you are likely going to be giving the exercise your full attention and therefore, will tune out any stressful thoughts you might have.
Why Inversions Can Really Help You Out
Another benefit that most people don’t consider is the increase in confidence you feel once you perform these techniques correctly. Have you ever pictured yourself doing a handstand? You may or may not have, but once you master techniques like this, you can do them without worry. Once you accomplish it for the first time, it’ll be a feeling that you won’t easily forget, and the best part is you look good doing it, too.
You’ll notice increased overall health, flexibility, and strength as you perform these exercises routinely. More importantly, inversions can just be fun, too. It’s always interesting to see where we can push our bodies and how far we can go.
Performing inversions long-term can help us understand our bodies better. It can teach us our limits so that we can work and train to overcome them while enjoying personal growth.
