Aerial Yoga: An Excellent Way Of Relieving Constriction & Stretching The Spine

By Patricia | November 11, 2008
Aerial Yoga: An Excellent Way Of Relieving Constriction & Stretching The Spine

Aerial Yoga blends basic Yogasanas and the miracle of gravity with the help of a soft breath trapeze. Without any strain or pain, just by lengthening your shoulder and core abdominal muscles, and expanding your spinal and shoulder flexibility you can practice this new technique. Here you have a hammock-like aerial apparatus that offsets gravitational affects just as you would do in partner Yoga. It is an excellent way of relieving constriction and stretching the spine. Aerial Yoga is the brainchild of Michelle Dortignac, a yoga instructor and a dancer.

This practice is not just for masters, as you may assume. Incredible as it might sound; with Aerial Yoga you can easily perform the different movements and poses while hovering a couple of inches above the ground. Aerial Yoga employs a soft trapeze to elevate a person off the ground a couple inches at time while allowing for yoga poses. It is just like a length of cloth, or a hammock, for instance, suspending a person by the waist and slightly elevating him off the ground. From here one starts doing the Yogasanas.

Aerial Yoga is founded on the principle of defying gravity, in a manner of speaking. You stretch your spine and straighten your shoulders by easing the compression resulting from the forces of gravity while you are on the ground. The couple of inches of aerial suspension helps free the tension in the muscles and bones, and increases flexibility.

This is a relatively new addition to the different forms of Yoga only developed in this decade by Michelle Dortignac. Blending traditional Yoga with a background of dance she says that, thanks to the effects of gravity, she actually taught her body to align itself appropriately enough.

A lot of people feel that Aerial Yoga is not meant for a beginner, largely owing to the novelty of the practice. They often even tend to get slightly nervous, particularly seeing the trapeze. But once people come to realize that they are, in fact, just a couple of inches off the ground with soft, padded, spongy mats beneath, they are able to overcome their initial inhibition. In spite of its novelty and relative modernity, Aerial Yoga still continues to be true to the fundamental principles of Yoga. In as much as finding inner peace is concerned, this form of Yoga is no different from the others except that they use gravity to make the release so much easier. Aerial Yoga strengthens your shoulders and core muscles, improves shoulder and spinal flexibility, and checks back strain.

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