How To Use Yoga for Digestion: 3 Recommended Poses

Yoga may also help with so many elements of our bodily, mental, and religious well-being. And that features our digestion. The follow of yoga can scale back stress, which helps regulate the gut-brain axis. There’s even latest analysis that means yoga may be a remedial treatment for IBS. 

And across the vacation season, when wellness-minded people indulge at numerous celebrations after which search for a yogic antidote, it is common to see bloat-relieving poses making their manner into circulation. However poses are solely one of many eight limbs of yoga. To really embrace the follow, honor its roots, and really feel its results, we have to method yoga holistically, bringing correct focus and breath, for example, to any circulate.

Yoga teacher Sara Sas,RYT, L.Ac., provides acupressure to this, too. Additionally a licensed acupuncturist and Conventional Chinese language Medication practitioner, she not too long ago shared with Properly+Good that, when she’s coping with digestive points, she pairs sure yoga poses with acupressure (i.e., no needles!). This provides her an added increase of aid and digestive assist. Right here, she shares her three go-tos. 

1. Wind-Relieving Pose (Pawanmuktasana)

1. Laying in your again, inhale and lengthen each of your legs out straight. On an exhale, hug your knees into your chest utilizing each arms, connecting the tops of your thighs to your abdomen/chest.
2. Take a couple of deep breaths on this place, permitting your physique to chill out and launch.
3. Discover your acupressure level (particulars under) and therapeutic massage that for a minute or in order you maintain this pose, persevering with to breathe deeply and mindfully.

Acupressure level: Stomach 36

Discover it: Place your hand just under your reverse knee, with the aspect of your index finger alongside the bottom of your kneecap. At concerning the tip of your pinky, simply on the surface of your tibia, you’ll discover this digestion-supporting acupressure point. 

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Why this works:

“By itself, Pawanmuktasana is a go-to pose for gasoline and bloating aid, because it helps to expel trapped air within the digestive tract,” says Sas. “Combining this with acupressure on the command level of the stomach, in line with Conventional Chinese language Medication, advantages the abdomen and spleen by serving to with the nourishment of digestion, whereas regulating intestines and expelling wind-gas. It’s a win-win.”

2. Goddess Pose (Utkata Konasana)

1. Together with your toes wider than hips-width distance aside, flip your toes outward. (Assume: sumo squat or second place grand plié)
2. Sink right into a squat, tucking your tailbone barely, sustaining an exterior rotation along with your thighs. Lock in your stomach muscle mass and keep an upright backbone with relaxed shoulder blades.
3. Carry your heels up, placing the burden into the balls of your toes.
4. Decrease heels, shifting weight into the again of the toes to carry the toes.
5. Hinge on the waist to seize underneath your toes and stimulate the strain factors (see under to find). You are able to do this one after the other.
6. Repeat the lifting and reducing of your heels, focusing your consideration on the acupressure level. 
7. Finish with toes flat on the bottom. 

Acupressure level: Kidney 1

Discover it: “This point is mainly the middle of the only of the foot,” says Sas. (Assume extra backside of your metatarsals, quite than backside of your arch.) 

Why this works:

“Goddess pose helps generate heat all through your physique, and the elevated circulation may also help along with your digestion,” says Sas. Including the Kidney 1 acupressure therapeutic massage may also help middle you. “Breathe deep, sending vitality into your toes to really feel a way of grounding, assist, and energy,” says Sas. “Once we are grounded and centered, our digestion is supported.” The other can also be true: Once we’re pressured, our digestion takes a toll. 

3. Simple Seated Twist (Parivrtta Sukhasana)

1. Sitting in a cross-legged place, along with your backbone straight and the crown of your head reaching towards the sky, deliver your left hand to your proper knee.
2. Protecting your backbone straight, twist to the proper, putting your proper hand behind you on the ground, close to your hip. Make sure you don’t go too far and lose your posture.
3. Look over your proper shoulder, and breathe deeply into the twist.
4. On this place, find and therapeutic massage the acupuncture level along with your left hand (location detailed under).
5. Change your cross-legged place (if the proper leg was on prime, deliver the left to the highest) and repeat this train on the alternative aspect, making certain you proceed to breathe deeply.

Acupressure level: Spleen 21

Discover it: “This point is known as ‘The Nice Embrace’ and is positioned on the aspect of your ribcage,” says Sas. “It may be simply stimulated throughout a seated spinal twist when you give your self a hug.”

Why this works:

Twisting poses are standard decisions for digestive well being, and for good purpose: Twisting the torso helps stimulate the digestive organs. 

With simple seated twist, particularly while you start with a twist to the right, you’ll therapeutic massage the ascending colon, after which descending colon as you twist to the left, serving to to “transfer issues alongside,” as they are saying. Including in some acupressure bolsters this impact. “Spleen 21 strikes Qi [energy] and blood,” explains Sas. “This transforms stagnation within the physique, particularly across the diaphragm, which [according to TCM] assists with higher digestion.”