Like chicken soup, yoga is good for the soul. It can boost your energy, help with respiratory and cardiovascular health [1], keep you strong, flexible, and and improve your sleep. It also plays a part in reducing anxiety and stress [2], which makes sense: similar to meditation [3], it's about listening to the breath and in the process, you learn to develop a connection to the body through stretch and self-reflection.
Now, I'm no yogi, but just this past year I've incorporated quick sessions into my nightly routine when I feel like I need it as a form of self-care. As a former gymnast [4], it's also a great way to keep up my flexibility. While I've found that almost every flow I've tried mitigates stress, there are flows that specifically target stress and anxiety. Here are some of the best ones I've tried recently, all from YouTube. I hope you'll join me this week, this month, sometime this year, for a little peace of mind.
23-Minute Yoga With Adriene Detox Flow
I want to start out by saying that the Yoga With Adriene YouTube channel [5] has flows for everything — period cramps, bad moods, text neck [6] — it's great. This particular "Yoga Wash" video really did calm me down after a particularly stressful day and completely alleviated my stress headache in just 20 minutes.
10-Minute Chill Out Yoga Stretch With Sarah Beth
I highly recommend doing this sequence before bed. It's simple yet effective in relaxing the mind and finding your centre. My favourite poses from the video include Happy Baby [7] and Chair Pose [8]. I know what you're thinking: "Why would you want to do a move like Chair Pose, that targets the legs, right before bed?" Personally, it brought some heat into my body and, by focusing on my balance, I was able to forget about the day's stressors. Of course, you can do this sequence whenever is convenient for you.
30-Minute Restorative Yoga With Alo Yoga
The key to this restorative yoga flow is "breathing space" into the tight areas of your body. It's full of deep hip stretches and comforting poses like Child's Pose [9] and a variation of Savasana [10] to end the video.
30 Minutes of Class FitSugar Chill Yoga
This mellow yoga flow from Yoga With Adriene [11] is a must when you want step away from your day and simply be in the present. My favourite part of the video [12] is when Adriene has you do Lion's Breath [13] about two thirds of the way through, where you exhale loudly with your tongue out to release any anxiety or emotional buildup. It's phenomenal. Also, we get to whisper "I'm awesome" to ourselves at the end, which is equally as phenomenal.
12-Minute Stress Relief With Boho Beautiful
This quick flow is particularly calming because of the push-pull of the waves in the background. She ends with Happy Baby (Of course!) and Savasana, walking us through the process of internal awareness and winding down.
45-Minute Stress Relief Yoga With Kassandra
Though this yoga flow is a bit longer than the others, it's worth your time. It starts with a breathing exercise where you use your fingers to plug one nostril as you inhale, then plug the other as you exhale (it's surprisingly relaxing). She incorporates a lot of Forward Folds [14] as well as a few poses using a block (which I didn't have but did anyway).
