Yoga at Home: Yoga Tip for Maintaining Your Motivation

The shoulder stand pose, shown above, is one of the more challenging yoga poses that I do daily.  It takes some focus and caution to enter, hold in place, and exit this pose.  Plus, I always make sure that if I switch my yoga practice to the afternoon or evening (which I sometimes do on weekends), that I don't do this pose until at least 3 hours after a meal to avoid interfering with digestion.

Some people tell me that they find it difficult to keep themselves motivated to do a regular yoga pracitce. One technique or tip that I have found helpful when on occasion, my motivation starts to lag is to go back and re-read the benefits of the different poses I do. I included key details on the benefits of each yoga pose presented in my book, Yoga at Home:  Gain Energy, Flexibility, and Serenity in 20-30 Minutes a Day, not only to explain what the poses do but also as inspiration and motivation. Just a few minutes of perusing the details of a pose are enough to inspire me to re-ignite my motivation.

Spend a few minutes reading the following 13 key benefits that you gain from doing the shoulder stand. Aren't they amazing!  Do you really want to miss out on them?  Especially the last one?!! I bet it will prompt you to don your yoga attire, roll out your mat, and begin a yoga pose right now!

Key benefits from the Shoulder Stand:

1. Benefits and energizes the entire body.
2. Massages and stimulates the spinal column.
3. Increases blood supply to brain to increase energy, tones the nervous system, and can improve mental faculties such as the memory.
4. Stimulates the thyroid and parathyroid glands, and enriches the pituitary gland.
5. This inversion repositions organs and glands into their proper place by countering the downward pull that gravity puts on the body.
6. Enhances circulation and helps to relieve strain placed on blood vessels when the body is upright for long periods. May alleviate varicose veins.
7. Can help regulate weight because the pose helps stimulate the thyroid gland.
8. Strengthens back and can build up chest.
9. Can eliminate headaches.
10. Stretches and strengthens shoulder and back muscles.
11. Stretches muscles and ligaments of the cervical region (the top part of the spine that consists of the seven vertebrae of the neck and the disks that separate them).
12. Strengthens entire nervous system.
13. Stimulates sexual glands and organs and boosts the libido. 

 Yours for enjoying daily yoga practice at home,

Laura Venecia Rodriguez, The Beginners' Yoga at Home Coach