3 Ways Yoga Helps with Self-care | My Soho Times

If you’re looking for ways to incorporate self-care into your daily routine, boost self-esteem or simply reconnect with yourself, practising Yoga regularly is a great starting point! Posture coach Ana Stefan shares her top 3 tips on how Yoga helps with self-care for the mind, body and soul…

1. You leave your shoes and your worries at the door.

When you walk into a Yoga class, the teacher will ask you to go barefoot and leave your phone outside. Although many people ignore the phone part… it’s a good idea to completely disconnect from the world for an hour.

Depending on the style of the Yoga class you signed up for, you may have to focus entirely on your balance, coordination and breathing. This doesn’t leave much headspace for anything else (like thinking about your to do list). So at least for an hour a week, it’s all about you. Take that time to move, breathe and let go.

2. Yoga gets you out of your comfort zone, which is a good thing.

Yoga can challenge your body with intricate poses. It can test your strength, flexibility and balance. But most importantly, it can totally change your perception of what your body can and cannot do.

When we encounter something that looks difficult, our default thinking is ” I cannot do that”, “I am not able to”, and sometimes we can’t, but we should at least try. Yoga forces you to look at your body in a very different way and to honour its abilities and limitations. Yoga teaches you patience and resilience, skills that we need in our everyday life.

3. Yoga teaches you the ultimate self-care tool: how to listen to your own body.

Many people have no idea what “listening to your body” means. It means becoming aware of the signals that your body sends. It means knowing exactly when to rest and when to move, when to hold on to something and when to let go.

We usually go through life ignoring the signals that our bodies send us until they have to send a louder, more insistent message: illness or injury. Yoga teaches you to walk through life with a deeper knowledge of yourself and your value. It teaches you that it’s ok to rest, to do less, to say no to a meeting or a night out. It’s self-care to say I’m not feeling my best today, I will slow down.

Ana Stefan is a Posture Coach, Yoga Teacher, Pilates Instructor and Flexibility Coach based in Dublin Ireland. She helps people improve their posture, strength and mobility to live better and without pain. www.anastefan.ie