Choose from 900 Yoga Positions to Find Your Favorite
By Heather Ashare - Yoga Expert for DietsInReview.com
There are an estimated 900 yoga documented asanas, the Sanskrit term for yoga posture, and that is a conservative number. So if your best friend comments that she doesn't like yoga, let her know that with a few hundred asanas to choose from, chances are in her favor that she will find one posture, maybe even two, that she will enjoy practicing.
In any typical yoga class you are likely to perform 10 to 80 postures, depending upon the style of yoga and length of class. And as any serious or not-so-serious yoga practitioner will tell you, there are some yoga postures we love to do and then there are some that we would prefer to hide out in Child's Pose until our teacher cues us to move on.
What relegates one particular yoga posture into the class of desert island favorite has to do with two key components: The sensation of performing the posture and the ease in which the posture is performed.
While devoted yoga practitioners will attest that all yoga postures makes us feel good, someone with extremely tight hamstrings or rigid hip flexors will emphatically attest to just how not-so-good Seated Forward Fold (Paschimottanasana) or Bound-Angle Pose (Baddha Konasana) feel when doing them. Being able to move and breathe freely in a posture is therefore a prerequisite for assigning a particular posture as your favorite.
Next, what makes one person jump into a yoga posture three breaths early but causes another practitioner to jump out of class for a bathroom break largely depends upon how easily or not-so easily they can perform the posture. For instance, a former ballerina may love to pull her body into Dancer's Pose while a downhill skier may prefer the balancing skill of performing Tree Pose.
And if you think about it, it makes perfect sense: Part of our enjoyment of doing something, whether it's Triangle Pose or baking a soufflé, is the sense of mastery that comes from doing something well and with a sense of accomplishment.
There is a little known secret that comes from having a regular and consistent yoga practice: That posture that you once considered as your nemesis will in due time become your favorite. In this sense, yoga becomes a mini reflection of life's lessons and lets you experience firsthand how the sweet reward of working through a challenge, not running away from it, yields its greatest gift.
Do you have a favorite yoga pose? What is it and what about it do you love so much?
September is yoga month! Learn more about this healthy practice:
A Beginner's Guide to Yoga
Most Popular Yoga Classes
Yoga Dictionary
