Written By: Tania Tarafdar | Updated : July 1, 2016 6:18 PM IST
If you have joined kickboxing or any other fitness class, the warm-up and cool-down exercises might seem like the ones you did in your yoga class. While a few stretches are identical, yoga and stretching are very different. It is true that yoga stretches your muscles, but it also includes a lot of other things apart from the basic stretching that you do at the gym. Neeta Sharma, yoga expert, tells you the difference.
Body alignment
Yoga places a lot of emphasis on the alignment of the body. In yoga, how you attempt to touch your toes it is more important than whether you can do it or not. For example, you always need to keep your spine erect whenever you attempt vrikshasana or the tree pose. Yoga requires some degree of balance and flexibility to execute the poses correctly.
Duration
You do not hold a position for too long while you stretch, but in yoga, you typically need to hold a position for 20-30 seconds. In yin yoga, you need to hold the poses for several minutes, stretching the connective tissue around the joint. You must try these 21 variations of yoga.
Breathing
Yoga teaches you to focus on your breath so that you do not hold your breath while you stretch. Just try not to breathe very deeply or intensely when you are getting into a yoga pose. At any point in time, if you feel lightheaded, make sure that your inhalation is as long as your exhalation.
Benefits
While stretching before a workout can prevent injury the benefits of yoga are many. Yoga not only stretches your muscles but it opens up locked joints and improves core strength. Yoga will offer deeper relaxation, and you will feel less stressed after a yoga class. All the stretching combined with breathing also makes you more aware.
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