Let’s Get Bent: The benefits of Vinyasa Yoga

The stock standard answer you will get when wanting to know what the word Vinyasa means will read something like this:

“Vinyasa is a Sanskrit term often employed in relation to certain styles of yoga. The term vinyasa may be broken down into its Sanskritic roots to assist in decoding its meaning. Nyasa denotes "to place" and vi denotes "in a special way."

However, I like to describe it as moving meditation. Vinyasa yoga is the joining together of two or more yoga asanas to create a sequence. The bodies movements are integrated with the movement of breath through the body. This sequence can be repeated multiple times. The sequences usually has a right flow and a left flow. “Flow” is another modern word that is often used to replace the word “vinyasa”. Giving you the instruction in the title, flow from one yoga posture to the next. Trying to make the sequence as fluid and as accurate as possible. This does not however mean that the sequence has to become faster. I find that many vinyasa classes these days are too fast and have lost the true sense of holding a yoga pose & reaping the benefits of each.

What are the benefits of Vinyasa:

• Building a better connection to your breathing patterns

• Strengthening your skills in mindfulness

• Works all components of fitness, stability, balance, strength, stamina etc

• Building better relationships with your neural receptors (hand eye co-ordination)

• Improves your stability and balance

• Allows you to be creative with body movements

• The flowing sequence of the postures and the expressions you put into it, can help to bring emotions you want to deal with to the surface.

• Vinyasas are a great way to challenge yourself and progress towards yoga goals

• The dedication and repetitious nature of the practice helps to build the skills to deal with everyday issues off of the yoga mat.

• A great aerobic workout for the body

• Increases the circulation and internal massage of the body and organs.

• A great way to start to build a daily routine.

If you want to know more about the benefits of Vinyasa Yoga then you can check out my article on my website – Top 10 Benefits of Vinyasa Yoga

I have kept the postures in this vinyasa very simple but with a little bit of a challenge for some of you to work towards. My suggestion is to join the postures in photo 1-6 together try to hold each posture for about 5 sec each, repeat the sequence five times.

1. Standing forward fold
2. Plank
3. Side plank right
4. Side plank left
5. Back to standing

Keep a steady inbreath and outbreath and move at an even steady pace. I have also included a video of the above vinyasa with a beginner variation as well as the regular variation for the online version on The Phuket News (see above).

Enjoy your alone time, there will come a time when all the craziness will come back and you will long for alone time to start again.

Happy stretching

Metta kim oxo