Yoga equipment
Types of tents, flashlights, bags, sleeping pads and more
Yoga has become a success among all kinds of people, but this discipline was not invented as a fashionable way of living; its origin has the purpose of helping individuals by easing strong pains in many regions of their bodies. The purpose of this activity is making people to listen to their body carefully since it knows what it can do; yoga is not about a competitive sport, that’s why when we practise it we must take it easy and don’t push our body too much. There are many alternatives to perform yoga, with the help of a teacher attending to yoga classes or at home by using yoga equipments, videos, books, websites in order to supplement our classes instruction. Yoga is about performing different postures by using the yoga equipment, but before grabbing one of the balls we must start with the original position that help us to focus on our breathing: we have to sit down and open our groin and hips; here the first accessory of our yoga equipment will be the blanket, very used during all the discipline process. But there are special mats to practise yoga, a sticky mat is an ideal surface for yoga since it keeps our feet and elbows from slipping; here there is a slight friction that help us to stretch the whole body in a safe way. Sticky mats also include a padding system that protects our elbows and keens. |
The mats will be used to perform almost every single yoga exercise, since most of them must be done on the floor and deal with different postures; among them we find the dog and cat posture that has the aim of increasing our spine flexibility. First we must place ourselves on our hands and keens keeping our hands in front of our shoulders; while we breathe in we must tilt the tailbone and pelvis up, dropping our belly low and lifting up our head. This is the most common exercise that we perform with a mat. We can also find in the yoga equipment the famous blocks, but these are not ordinary blocks, they are designed specially to perform yoga activities, they provide us support and height when it comes to perform complicated poses. We can place them under our hips, heels and hands, or between the last ones in order to practise full extension exercises. But not all the blocks have the same size: 4x6x10 (inches) block is the most used among yoga students. By the use of these blocks we perform exercises such us “the triangle” in where we slide from one side to another with our les spread finding support on the blocks. |
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The yoga equipment also includes the bolsters, they are also designed specially for this activity; they come in many shapes: cylindrical, rectangular, to perform breathing exercises, necks exercises, etc. Bolsters have the purpose of providing us safety when we do difficult or complicated positions; they are great for stretching and supporting our belly, hamstrings, back and chest. The rectangular bolster is in charge of supporting our abdomen so we can relax our stomach as we bend forward; meanwhile the cylindrical, supports our chest so that we can relax our head. There are many kind of yoga activities we couldn’t perform if we didn’t have a strap, these provide the length that enables our grasp limbs beyond our reach; most of them are made of cotton and come in many colours. By the use of these straps we can work out our legs, arms, hands and feet, allowing us to reach positions we couldn’t reach before, they also have buckles to adjust the system as tight as we want. |
The yoga equipment also includes ropes, and these ropes allow us to practice forward bends, backbends, stretch our chest and shoulder muscles, create an spinal traction, workout our abdominal muscles and organs, enhance our kidney circulation, etc. These ropes provide us a large menu of movements and exercises; they help us to eliminate any kind of muscular pain or wrong posture. Among all these equipments there is one that became very popular and although its main use is to perform yoga activities or exercises there are many fitness trainers that use it, we’re talking about the Swiss ball. This ball is great to perform all kind of exercises, its aim is to give us flexibility in our abdomen and strengthen our legs muscles. The Swiss ball is also used to perform relaxing tasks, and to stretch our body parts. There are dozens of accessories among the yoga equipment, we must remember that each of them was designed to perform only one task, otherwise if we don’t use them properly, we could get serious injuries.
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