This blog post has been authored by Talayeh Shabanifard, Yoga with Talayeh (Yogital)
Yoga is great but it’s not complete. You should practice every day But you shouldn’t do the same set of poses every day.
Anything that you do repeatedly over long periods of time can lead to a repetitive stress injury (RSI). Even yoga. Yoga is great but It’s missing som factors for a well rounded healthy body.
Here are 3 reasons why you should yoga every day But you should train more than yoga.
1. Nothing happens in your “Comfort Zone”
Your body needs variation. This is a fundamental and powerful law of nature. If you just pull and not push, you have a problem, if you just stretching your hamstrings and don’t building muscles around it, you have a problem.
That’s just the way our body is, you need to do balance movements to have a balances body.
If you get stuck in your routines you get wrong effect longterm. Mix it up. Whatever your yoga asana practice is – don’t get sucked into thinking that it is ideal to do it every day.
Vary your routine.
Include running, swimming, lift some weights or walking. If you absolutely believe that you must practice every day then at least make sure you are not doing the exact same poses every day. Replace updog with locusts for 2 weeks, remove downdog for a week and see what happens. Get out of your comfort zone.
Strive for a balance of strength and flexibility in your body.
2. Keep Your Brain Fit Too
Another problem with staying in your comfort zone is that you get mindless. We tend to check out mentally when we do something over and over again the same way day in and day out. Doing something new or in a new way forces you to pay attention. You may not like it at first but it forces you to focus as your brain and body try to make sense of what is happening. Your brain benefits when you turn off “Auto pilot”!
Bringing newness to your practice or practicing in a “new” way can change hundreds of millions of connections between the nerve cells in your brain maps.
In order to keep your brain “fit” you must learn something new, instead of replaying already mastered skills.
3. Be Strong And Flexible
I made the mistake of staying in my own comfort zone. If you have a flexible body, make it strong as well. Otherwise your joints and tissues get problem and become unstable.
Your body needs strength in addition to flexibility so that there is STABILITY. That’s where the magic happens! Balance in your body. Because flexibility + flexibility + more flexibility leads to INSTABILITY.
Building up your strength, promoting healthy joints and giving you a good cardiovascular workout bring your body into balance.
Welcome to my world!
My yoga journey began in 2001, when I accompanied my mother to my first yoga session, where I realized that yoga is more than just exercise. I had the opportunity to train karate, basketball, volleyball, and skiing earlier that have given me a good perception of sports in general. After I got introduced to yoga, it quickly developed into a lovely and much-needed balance to an otherwise high-performing life. The newly acquired passion led to many years of intense yoga practice and an ever-growing interest in the area. In the year of 2011, I moved to Sweden and began to discover the broad range that the country had to offer.
The yoga training taught me to listen to my inner self and pay attention to the signals that my body emits. One of the greatest lessons I have learned through yoga is that when you feed your body and soul equally with positive energy, you will achieve a vital balance for a healthy and enjoyable life.
After several years of work experience in the IT industry with yoga as a growing hobby, I decided to re-saddle and devoted myself to my passion. My initiative led me to receive my yoga certificate in the area of Hatha & Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga, which is acknowledged by official Yoga Alliance Professionals. I have also trained in Aromatherapy, where I have learned to use scents and the healing power of essential oils for a more pleasant time on the yoga mat.