Are you working too hard? How many hours a week do you spend at work – 30, 40, 50 maybe 60 hours? Do you find yourself regularly taking work home or coming in to the office extra early to catch up?

If you are a working woman, you probably have to come home, cook dinner, sort out the laundry, help your children with their homework or pick them up from an after school activity. It is almost as if you have a “second night shift” when you come home. Some men do assist with the household chores but generally, even in this day and age, women generally carry the major burden of domestic and child care/parenting roles. All of this adds to you feeling exhausted, tired and drained when you go to bed.

You may desire to live a simpler life, to spend more quality time with your family, to work fewer hours or even change jobs and retrain and follow your childhood dream job. However, with the increased cost of living, higher medical bills and the ever real threat of redundancy and unemployment it is difficult for you to take time to rest, relax and reconnect with family and friends.

Constant overworking and lack of rest affects your physical, emotional and spiritual health and well being. When was the last time you cooked an evening meal and ate it with your family, undisturbed by the television, computers or even text messages?

This steady pressure and sense of rush pervades all life and if left unchecked leads to anxiety, depression, stress related disorders and even alcoholism and drug dependency.

What can you do to manage your time more effectively? To protect your body from physically breaking down and your mind from crashing in with all the demands placed on you.

Yoga, an ancient form of health care could well be the modern panacea – a way for you to finally beat stress and gain more control and balance in your life.

Here are five benefits you gain when you practice yoga as a way to reduce stress and tension in your life.

1. Yoga offers you a holistic approach to dealing with stress. Yoga exercises, breathing techniques and relaxation affects your mind, body and spirit.

2. Yogic breathing exercises help calm your nervous system and increase oxygen levels and blood supply to the internal organs, all of which leads to a deeper sense of calm, inner peace and balance. Learning how to breathe correctly is a wonderful skill you can use anytime during the day when you feel overwhelmed, confused and anxious.

3. Yoga poses help to release blockages and stimulate and energise your body. Yoga poses work on the energy centres (chakras) and as energy is released, it flows easily and readily through your body; so you have more energy and vitality to cope with demanding tasks.

4. Yoga exercises detox your body and can help to speed up the removal of toxins and bacteria in the body. Twisting poses in particular give a deep and gentle massage to the internal organs of your body.

5. Meditation techniques deepen your experience of relaxation and rest. During meditation your body undergoes certain physiological effects which counteract the negative effects of stress; your brain activity slows down as there is an increase in alpha brain wave activity and your heartbeat and breathing rate slow down and blood lactate levels drop.

As you can see, yoga helps to de-stress you on a physical, emotional and spiritual level. Regular practice will empower you to release stress quicker and regain a deeper sense of calm, balance and happiness in your life. Try a yoga class and see what difference it makes to your ability to cope with stressful situations.

Especially in the Western world there has been an immense increase in people who are overweight or obese. It is a sad truth but one of the things you can do to get your body back to a desirable weight is to take up yoga. Don’t be fooled into thinking that yoga, due to its lack in exhaustive activity, won’t help you to lose weight – you would be seriously wrong! Your metabolism can help you to lose weight faster and certain yoga positions boost metabolism – fact.

Alone, losing weight with yoga will be a very gradual progress. The trick is to team it with a more active sport such as swimming or spinning – the two combined will bring results. You might be wondering how you will fit all of this exercise into your daily routine, but with yoga it only takes 15-20 minutes to reap the benefits.

Yoga is a spiritual exercise as well as a physical one and can assist in a healthy mindset. The practice of yoga has long been associated with the spiritual being and many that take part are doing it for mental strength over physical. 15 minutes of yoga in the morning will clear the mind and prepare you for a successful day at work. If you have a lot on your mind and can’t seem to relax or de-stress then consider yoga as a method to induce tranquility into your day.

We can all be susceptible to injury from time to time, whether it be because we don’t do enough sport or we take part in a lot of active sports. The power of yoga is that it can help to prevent injuries happening – especially ones to the muscles and joints. Over time, yoga will make you far more flexible and your mobility will increase. Being flexible as opposed to rigid will be the decision-maker should you overstretch or twist during sport or everyday activities.

The longer you practice yoga the more your flexibility will improve – meaning you can stretch further and for loner and generally have a wider range of mobility. There are many positions in yoga which can enhance the health of joints and ligaments. Yoga is well suited to the 21st century as more and more people are required to work in the office and spend long hours sat at a desk – often with a bad posture.

This is really just the tip of the iceberg as yoga can be beneficial to many individual circumstances. Pregnant women can also do some yoga positions that will help them to relax and stay fit during their pregnancy. Certain injuries can be helped with the practice of yoga and so on. Yoga is beneficial for all walks of life and it doesn’t have to take up a lot of time or even effort.

When you think of exercising, chances are, the mental image you get is someone running on a treadmill, someone sweating as they lift weights, or a heart-pumping aerobic workout. But not all forms of exercise are so exhausting.

If you’re looking for a way to calm down your day, increase your flexibility and personal awareness, and to get your heart rate elevated without draining you for the rest of the day, yoga may be a great fitness routine to work into your day. It can not only help stretch your body and allow you time to meditate and focus on you, but it can help burn calories and fat without the high impact running, exhausting endless crunches and weight-lifting.

Yoga has many benefits, which extend from just the average fitness angle. Yoga is a great way to increase the flexibility of your body. Certain yoga positions rely on working and lubricating certain joints, tendons, ligaments and muscles that work together in harmony. By participating in yoga, the positions and activity of the poses can be a great way to stretch your body without being too strenuous.

Yoga can have a detoxification effect on one’s body. During yoga poses, you are stretching muscles and massaging internal organs, which allows complete blood flow and supply throughout your body, and helps to flush out any toxins from your body, giving you a refreshed feel. This boost in energy will follow through in your day-to-day life, allowing you to be calm, energized, and feeling younger!

During yoga, you are utilizing the poses to help you become stronger and more flexible, which in turn will help you develop a stronger core and better posture. This will help ease back and neck issues in those who have been experiencing issues centered around their core. In fact, yoga is known for helping relieve the symptoms of common chronic medical conditions, such as joint pain and arthritis, back and neck pain, insomnia, and asthma.

Not only are you toning muscles during yoga, you are massaging all of your body organs and increasing your flexibility. But the other benefit of yoga is what happens on the inside: when you’re practicing yoga, you are also spending time focusing on you, and meditating. Though yoga and meditation are often confused as being similar, they are not. However, yoga can give you that calm, inner quiet and peace, and can help relieve stress and center your mind, body and spirit together as one. This can help keep depression and anxiety at bay, and allow you to harbor better moods and increase your levels of concentration during the day.

Yoga can benefit anyone at any age and fitness level, and should not be overlooked when one is looking to start a fitness regimen or routine. Yoga, though low-impact, slower, and more calming than a run or weight-lifting session, can be just as good for your outside appearance as it is for your inside emotional well-being.

Sun salutations are a key part of yoga that all yogis are aware of and most practice as well. Chandra Namaskara or moon salutation is another sequence of asanas that are practiced under certain types of yoga. This sequence consists of a series of ten different poses, which start with the mountain pose and lead the practitioner through a number of postures to complete a salutation. There are a few variations of the Chandra Namaskara series, but most of them focus on the different phases of the moon for inspiration of the cycle. These vinyasa style yoga sessions are often times supposed to counteract the impact of the Surya Namaskara.

Asanas for Chandra Namaskara:

The most commonly practiced moon salutation sequence consists of a string of the following postures:

Mountain Pose

Raised Arms Pose

Standing Forward bend

Lunge Pose

Downward facing Dog Pose

Plank Pose

A combination of Ashtanga Namaskara and Cobra Pose

Repetition of the first five Asanas in reverse order: beginning with Downward Facing Dog and ending with Mountain Pose.

There are a number of other variations that have evolved based on the gurus that teach them. Each is designed to cater to the different needs of the yogi who practices it.

Benefits of Moon Salutation:

Yoga as a whole leads to numerous benefits for the avid practitioner. When broken down in terms of asana or series advantages, then it becomes apparent that there is no part that is fruitless. There are health as well as fitness gains that can be accomplished from the practice of moon salutation as a standard part of the yoga. A few of these are listed:

• It is very helpful in channeling the lunar energy and inducing relaxing and creative traits
• It stretches and relaxes the spine, pelvic area, hips, knees, ankles and the abdominal muscles.
• The root chakra is opened with these exercises.
• Toxins are removed and blood circulation is improved along with maximizing the oxygen intake for better blood flow.
• Improved circulation provides a sense of well being and promotes a healthier self.
• Relaxes the mind and body and allows centering of the focus on the inner self.

The benefits are not limited to these, in fact as the moon salutations are performed at night, one of its most important advantages is that it proves to be great relaxer and sleep inducer. People suffering from insomnia in particular can reap the benefits of Chandra Namaskara, as it removes the stress and soothes the mind and body for a long night of peace and rest.

Although the benefits are numerous, at the same time caution needs to be taken when practicing moon salutations as well. As the series mostly involves a combination of standing and back bending postures, it is not suitable for people suffering from asthma or other breathing and lung problems. In addition, patients of heart problems should consult their medical practitioners before starting these salutations, or streamline them according to their health limitations. The Chandra Namaskara should entail comfortable and relaxing postures and not in any way be the cause of stress or strain.