If you just lifted a brow at my title, you need to read this. Yes! Yoga can help you glow. Radiant skin needs oxygen and nutrient rich blood and it also needs waste products to be swept away.
Lady hormones are constantly changing with our cycle. Estrogen and Progesterone directly effects the blood vessels. So, slows down blood flow to the skin, slows down digestion and yes then in turn slows down lymph drainage too.
Here is how yoga can help. Yoga increases oxygen intake, aids digestion so that your body can absorb yummy nutrients and then pumps that delicious blood throughout the body and to the largest organ of the body, the skin. Then it helps you to internally wash away all the yukky waste products by dumping it into the lymph drainage system or into the toilet.
And there is more… some of these postures also helps you to balance your hormones so that your body reaches that blissful state of homeostasis… and if you don’t know what that is, it means you feel just right.
End result – pure beauty inside and out.
Remember though that diet plays a very important part in life too, especially when it comes to your skin. Sugars are bad and no matter how many headstands you do your body can’t sweep all those waste products away. If you must eat something sweet choose to snack on dark chocolate , berries or pears.
Now, which pose do what?
- Start with a forward fold and let your blood flow into your head and face. This pose also stabilize the hormones and calms the nervous system.
- Walk your hands forward into a downward dog pose. Still working on stabilizing the hormones here. And making sure blood flow pumps into every corner or the body.
3. Come into an open twist. Back leg can be bent or stretched. Now we are opening the chest so that you can start taking even bigger breaths and enrich your blood with oxygen.
4. Twist over your front bent leg to give your digestion a spark, so that your body can start absorbing yummy vitamins and minerals.
5. Great now let’s get into Camel pose, any variation would do. The heart and lungs open up again, we send blood flow to our lady bits (ovaries and uterus and cervix) and then we squeeze the kidneys a bit to get rid of some waste products that we do not need.
6. Now get on your back so that we can stimulate the thyroid as we push up into a bridge pose. And we relax the lady bits again together with the nervous system… woosah (feel the bum bum burn? Extra value)
7. Now rock your legs over your head… if you can (if you can’t just rest with your legs in the air or against a wall). Here we go a little bit deeper into everything. Relaxing the nervous system, making the heart pump a little bit harder to get blood everywhere, balancing the hormones and giving the adrenal glands a bit of a “aaaaah” moment. Now just when you feel you can’t breathe anymore….
8. Reach your feet up into the air for a shoulder stand. (You can also place your feet into a wall and press into that wall until your hips lift up). We just flipped the switch. Body is upside down again. Total benefit for balancing the hormones and aiding lymph drainage.
9. Slowly roll back down and in your own time make your way up to a seated position where you are going to do your last twist to neutralize the spine and calm it all down.
10. Smile 🙂