Yoga

Anyone can benefit from yoga; it isn’t just about being flexible and you don’t need to know anything about chakras. 

I started Mourne Yoga in the summer of 2018 to try and make yoga accessible to everyone who wants to feel a bit better - physically and mentally. I personally started yoga as a way of moving again that wouldn’t put too much stress on my body. Other people practice it as a way to reduce day-to-day stress or relieve some of the stiffness in their bodies. Athletes use it to improve their mobility and performance. It’s also a great way to learn how to clear your mind and become more focussed.

On a physical level, the poses you do in a yoga class help to create space in the body - in your joints, in your fascia and muscles. This helps you feel better physically because it helps to reduce a lot of stiffness and release muscle tension which builds up over time. Who doesn’t want that these days?

There’s also an element of breathing as you do the poses which helps with two things:

a) it keeps you focussed in the here and now (rather than thinking about all the stuff that happened today, or is likely to happen later on) because you are concentrating on the combination of movement and breath 

b) it improves the quality of your breath. The more space you create in your physical body, the better you will start to breathe - deeper, smoother - which will help to reduce stress levels by impacting your parasympathetic nervous system

There are no real downsides to yoga as far as I can see.

How you want to use it is up to you. If you’re quite spiritual, there’s a lot of elements you can immerse yourself in. If you’d rather just practice to feel less stiff, less stressed or help improve your performance in other sports that you play, that’s cool too.