How To Use Yoga for Digestion: 3 Recommended Poses

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

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

Yoga teacher Sara Sas,RYT, L.Ac., provides acupressure to this, too. Additionally a licensed acupuncturist and Conventional Chinese language Drugs practitioner, she lately shared with Effectively+Good that, when she’s coping with digestive points, she pairs sure yoga poses with acupressure (i.e., no needles!). This offers her an added increase of reduction and digestive assist. Right here, she shares her three go-tos. 

1. Wind-Relieving Pose (Pawanmuktasana)

1. Laying in your again, inhale and prolong 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 beneath) 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 slightly below 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 skin 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 reduction, 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 response to Conventional Chinese language Drugs, 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. (Suppose: 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 tissue and preserve 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 elevate the toes.
5. Hinge on the waist to seize underneath your toes and stimulate the stress factors (see beneath 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. (Suppose 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 help along with your digestion,” says Sas. Including the Kidney 1 acupressure therapeutic massage may help heart you. “Breathe deep, sending power into your toes to really feel a way of grounding, assist, and energy,” says Sas. “After we are grounded and centered, our digestion is supported.” The alternative can also be true: After we’re burdened, 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, convey your left hand to your proper knee.
2. Preserving your backbone straight, twist to the suitable, 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 beneath).
5. Change your cross-legged place (if the suitable leg was on prime, convey the left to the highest) and repeat this train on the other aspect, making certain you proceed to breathe deeply.

Acupressure level: Spleen 21

Discover it: “This point is known as ‘The Nice Embrace’ and is situated 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 fashionable decisions for digestive well being, and for good cause: Twisting the torso helps stimulate the digestive organs. 

With straightforward seated twist, particularly whenever 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.”