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.

In addition, twisting postures realign the relationship between the shoulder girdle and the spine. This means that they alternatively stretch and strengthen all the muscles that bind 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.

Wind up to unwind: Strengthen your upper back

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.

Fan your inner fire and strengthen your hips and abs

In this short practice, we gradually increase our twisting capacity to make our way toward Revolved High Lunge, which helps to strengthen the entire body and get all the above benefits of twisting postures. We also use Gupta mudra and Bellows breath to stimulate our inner fire and process everything we take in to ensure a steady supply of energy, nourishment, and inspiration.

All practices are available on the Home Yoga Practice App.