By Indira Midha

 

 

We’re all tired, tense and pressed for time. After all, we’re college students – what else is new? I’ve recently started taking five minutes each morning to do the following three poses; they help me feel stretched out and overall less tense in preparation for my day.

 

 

The Cobra

Yoga Journal states these are the benefits of this pose:

• Strengthens the spine
• Stretches chest and lungs, shoulders, and abdomen
• Firms the gluteus maximus
• Stimulates abdominal organs
• Helps relieve stress and fatigue
• Opens the heart and lungs
• Soothes sciatica
• Calms asthmatic people
• Increases body heat, destroys disease, and awakens kundalini, according to traditional texts

 

 

 

Downward-Facing Dog

Yoga Journal states these are benefits of this pose:

• Calms the brain and helps relieve stress and mild depression
• Energizes the body
• Stretches the shoulders, hamstrings, calves, arches, and hands
• Strengthens the arms and legs
• Relieves menstrual discomfort when done with head supported
• Helps prevent osteoporosis
• Improves digestion
• Relieves headache, insomnia, back pain, and fatigue
• Soothes those with high blood pressure, asthma, flat feet, sciatica, sinusitis

 

 

 

Extended Triangle

Yoga Journal states that these are the benefits of the pose:

• Stretches and strengthens the thighs, knees, and ankles
• Stretches the hips, hamstrings, and calves; shoulders, chest, and spine
• Stimulates the abdominal organs
• Helps relieve stress
• Improves digestion
• Helps relieve the symptoms of menopause
• Relieves backache
• Soothes those with anxiety, flat feet, infertility, neck pain, osteoporosis, and sciatica

 

 

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