Sunday, April 26, 2009

A yoga practice for breast health

Congratulations for taking such good care of your body and mind. Just being proactive about your health tells your body that you care for it, and this will support it in its quest for good health!

Start your practice with some warming up, especially for the shoulders. And/OR You might prefer to just do a few sun salutations with focus on the shoulders and chest.

Do something like these arm circles for several cycles of breaths. Try them in both directions: the one that comes naturally to you, and then the other way too.


Practice a few standing postures that you find powerful and warming. Something like these ones. Do one side first, holding each postures for, say, five breaths, and then return to the top of your mat, standing, and observing the effects of the postures. Repeat on the other side.









Once your body feels warm and ready, start to open up the shoulders and front of the chest, letting the blood move into the tissue in and around the breasts and armpits.

Here are 5 shoulder openers that would contribute to a healthy/open chest area. Choose just one or two, or do them all! If you do a posture on one side, as always, practice it with the other side for the same duration. You can hold these for 5 breaths each, or longer.


























Now that your body is feeling open and the blood is going, practice an inversion (or several) to let all this fresh blood nourish the glands around the chest, neck that work to keep us radiantly healthy. Try to feel the body's fluids getting to places that they don't normally get to. Hold these postures longer than the others, if you like. Especially the legs-up-the-wall one. It's fun!

Enjoy the feeling of fluid circulation, unobstructed breath deep in your lungs, and the let yourself release into Savasana.

* If you are interested in looking at the energy associated with this part of the body, we are dealing with the fourth energy centre: The Heart. If you like to use visualizations in your practice, the colour associated with the heart is GREEN.
The breasts are the part of the body that deal most with nurturing, love, and compassion, so be sure to practice with these qualities in mind/heart:) Do your practice with love and compassion.

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