Yoga Practice For Decongestion|Down Dog This

For a good chunk of my life, I was constantly congested in my nasal and chest area. This really limited the exercises I could do – because I easily ran out of breath and stamina when jogging, swimming and lifting weights.

From personal study in recent years, I found out that much of this congestion was rooted in easily treatable conditions. For one, I carried around a lot of anxiety from my job and a lack of physical stimulation to counter the mental. While I was hardly aware of it, this made my daily breathing shallow and labored. Not enough oxygen was filling the cells in my body – especially, as you might have guessed, in my nasal and chest cavities.

Secondly, so much time and energy consumed by my job left little for my diet and nutritive care. I found out, with one visit to my allergist, that the chemicals and components in my food further constricted my oxygen-depleted body, two of which were gluten and pollen.

Changing my diet helped alleviate nasal and chest congestion, to some degree. But what really cured me from chronic stuffiness was a simple, weekly yoga routine. After years of practicing, I narrowed down three specific poses that focus specifically on de-clogging the chest and nasal cavities. Yoga is the most effective, natural treatment on the market for stubborn blockages that can be opened by oxygenating the cells. And, what’s more, yoga makes me feel good in every other part of my body without even trying.

If you’re suffering from congestion anywhere in your body, I’m recommending the following three yoga poses to help you open up to a healthier, lighter you.

The first is camel pose.

To do this pose, follow these steps.

1)    Kneel on your mat with your thighs slightly separated at a 90 degree angle to the floor. Imagine that you are drawing your sitting bones into your torso, while keeping your outer hips soft and butt unclenched.

2)    Put your hands on the back of your pelvis, with the bases of your palms on the tops of your butt, fingers pointing down. Inhale and lift your heart by pressing the shoulder blades against your back ribs.

3)    Now lean back – slowly. Keep your head up, chin resting on your chest and hands on the back of your pelvis. If you are comfortable, reach back to grab your ankles or feet, one hand at a time. Make sure to keep pressing your thighs perpendicular to the ground and raising your chest to the sky.

4)    Press your palms firmly against your heels or soles and breathe into your whole body. You can keep your neck in a relatively neutral position, neither flexed nor extended, or drop your head back so long as you don’t feel strained in the throat.

I’d recommend staying in this pose anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute. When you come back to a neutral kneel, do so gingerly – releasing one hand from your ankle or foot at a time and not whipping the neck up abruptly. Come into child’s pose to finish, and take a few long, deep breaths into your lower back.

The next pose to help relieve congestion is plow pose. It’s done like this:

1)    Start by laying on your back, with arms at your sides and feet planted on the floor so that your knees are bent.

2)    Build an arch by lifting your butt and supporting your lower back with your two hands, keeping the two knees bent and your feet, shoulders and head on the floor.

3)    Gently and slowly, see if you can use your hands to support this arch as you raise one foot, and then the other to the sky. Raise your legs until they are perpendicular to the ground, with toes pointing up.

4)    Hold this pose for a minute or so, while remembering to breathe deeply. If you feel comfortable, continue to extend your legs over your head until your toes touch the ground. Make sure your neck remains lose and if you start to feel crunched, lift your feet back up to the air and hold the pose here.

5)    When you are ready, gently come down from plow – first by bending your knees and then rolling your spine to the floor, one vertebrae at a time.

Finally, the forward fold. This one’s great for starters – anyone can do it!

1)    Stand on your mat with feet hip-distance apart. Raise your arms to the sky and stretch to the sky as high as you can – even coming up onto your tiptoes so that your whole body hyper extends. This allows energy to flow through your body in its greatest, liveliest volume.

2)    Without releasing, bend your entire torso over your thighs so that your fingertips come to the floor. Finally release your stretch and your head so that you are simply hanging over your legs. Breathe into your lower back and feel tension dissipate.

The simple act of bending and allowing gravity to pull the weight of your body down signals your body’s decongestion, especially in the head and chest. It’s also great for stretching your hamstrings, which is one of the primary areas yoga helps make flexible.

These three simple, but powerful poses compliment any practice, as well as help you oxygenate cells in the cavities that, when constricted, prevent you from enjoying everyday life.

From my mat to yours,