The benefits of regular yoga practice are boundless. Yoga has been known to reduce stress, increase flexibility, build muscle, improve posture, and increase blood flow. It can help you focus, sleep better, breathe better—the list goes on .

Daily exercise is already a great way to reduce stress, but yoga in particular has a strong effect on the body and mind by creating mindfulness through awareness of the breath. If you’re skeptic, “mindfulness” and “awareness” might just sound like silly fad words. But even psychologists point to mindfulness as a way to better cope with major and minor life events by observing experiences without judging them as good or bad.

If you’re interested in the calming effects yoga can have on the mind and body, you might benefit from giving it a try. We’ve compiled a list of 10 yoga poses to relieve stress to help you get started:

1. Child’s Pose

Child’s pose calms the mind and helps relieve stress and fatigue. It also stretches the hips, thighs, and ankles, and can relieve back and neck pain. 

2. Corpse Pose

Corpse pose is a great pose for mindful meditation. It relaxes your mind and body, relieves mild depression, lowers blood pressure, and can help ease headache, fatigue, and insomnia.

3. Legs Up the Wall Pose

This deeply relaxing pose calms the nervous system and aids in digestion. Combined with deep rhythmic breathing, this pose can help quiet the mind and get you ready for sleep.

4. Cat-Cow Pose

Cat-cow is actually a combination of two poses in a gentle flow. It warms the body, brings flexibility to the spine, opens the chest, stimulates the kidneys and adrenal glands, and relieves stress and anxiety.

5. Tree Pose

Tree pose helps develop balance and mind/body awareness. It calms and relaxes your central nervous system, while it strengthens your thighs, groin, shoulders, core, calves, and foot muscles. Find how to do it here.

6. Extended Puppy Pose

This pose helps relieve tension in the shoulders, spine, upper back, and arms. It can help ease chronic tension, insomnia, stress and anxiety.

7. Seated Forward Fold

This toe-touching pose provides a deep stretch to the entire back of the body, while calming the nervous system and emotions, and stimulating the reproductive and urinary systems.

8. Eagle Pose

Eagle pose focuses on balance and eases tension in the legs, shoulders, and back. (https://yogainternational.com/article/view/eagle-pose-step-by-step)

9. Reclining Bound Angle Pose

This pose helps relieve stress and mild depression, as well as symptoms of menstruation and menopause. It stimulates the abdominal organs and increases blood flow, and provides a stretch for the inner thighs, knees, and groin (http://www.yogajournal.com/pose/reclining-bound-angle-pose/).

10. Cobra Pose

Cobra pose opens the chest, improves circulation, and reduces fatigue and stress. It also has the added benefit of toning the abdomen while stretching the entire back and shoulders.

Ready to throw on a pair of yoga pants and get started? Check out Athlete Beyond for athletic apparel to keep you cool and comfortable throughout your practice.