We can use a yoga Tree Pose today and these days as a reminder and metaphor for our lives, and the trees that have impacted our lives.
Firstly, what is so special about trees that have meaning in our lives?
The obvious being that trees are growing, living creatures just like us humans with unique features. We know trees are alive because they bloom, shed leaves, and pollen (not their greatest spring dominant feature).
Trees can grow from a mere seed that fits in your hand to a super strong tree you can climb (similar to a growing person from an egg to an adult).
The appearance and rings on a tree can show age, as our human bodies and features do the same thing.
When I was growing up, we purposefully remembered trees on National Arbor Day. Usually, the celebration included the installment of a new baby plant at school. The remembrance of the special day has been crowded out by other hashtag events but you can do your appreciation just by looking out the window at the trees near you, or by getting in a yoga Tree Pose.
These days, we celebrate yoga days more than we do trees it seems, but luckily there is a standing pose that represents trees in yoga. We can appreciate trees from a personal growth perspective.
Trees are a metaphor for our lives.
In Tree, remind yourself of these 5 areas:
1.Growth and direction. You can change your yoga Tree Pose at any point. You can lift your right bended-knee leg to rest on your left shin, or you can lift your right leg higher to form a number “4” formation with your right foot rested on your left thigh (looking like a flamingo).
You can take your wide arms and open them to the sky, have them go straight up parallel to your ears, or bring them to heart center with prayer hands.
Your tree can go in any direction of your choosing. As you balance one leg, you can build up strength and notice one leg is usually stronger than the other.
2.Grounded. You can feel grounded with your feet planted on the floor, like a tree with a stump firmly rooted in the earth. When you’re not sent from busy task to task, you can gain clarity about your life and deliberate actions you take. You’re not wishy-washy, tossed to and from. You’re steadfast and purposeful like a tree.
3.Learning. A tree is also a symbol of knowledge. From trees, we make paper that we can bind together to make books that expand our minds.
The more branches we develop, the more we can become useful to the world. Animals can use our tree and we can impact the community around us like moss growing on trees.
As you grow older, you can become wiser and stronger as you’ve experienced situations to increase your know-how.
4.Being alive! If you feel a sensation in any of your parts, you can take that as a positive sign you’re alive. Your automatic breath is no longer a gift you take for granted, if you become consciously aware of your inhale and exhale.
In yoga, we do a lot of breathwork. The inhale is often when we’re facing up or lifting up, and exhale when we’re grounding down. The breath is a little different than when lifting weights in a gym. So don’t get confused. And you can pause at anytime and do 4-7-8 breathing.
Trees and plants don’t get confused. They play a sustainable role for us by giving off carbon dioxide. Without them, we would not have a life in our ecosystem.
5.Uniqueness. The more you practice your various yoga Tree Pose styles, the better your tree can enliven yourself as you let your roots develop into hybrid trees. You can have properties like a flexible and resilient palm, a durable evergreen, or a hardy cactus. You could have overlapping properties in your versatility and personality.Continue reading “5 Yoga Tree Pose Life Metaphors”
Yoga poses are the breath of life. We all start somewhere as beginners. And it’s usually on a mat. And if we’re lucky, in a class with others and a teacher where we get instruction.
Yoga poses for beginners are also for those who have been doing yoga for decades. Because we all have aching joints from time to time. And the basic poses are just what we need.
Coming up with your own yoga pose routine can help restore specific muscles, joints, and balance to your day. It’s a reset.
Evolving into new yoga poses can be a powerful way to discover how to cure your own body aches and pains.
And, I didn’t particularly like yoga when I first started. It was intimidating and there was a learning curve to keep looking at specific body parts, making sure that it matched with what the yoga instructor was saying and doing.
Somehow I got myself to go back to class. And I started to learn and get into certain poses that became familiar. Child’s pose and other resting yoga poses were my respite in the beginning.
Gradually with added stamina and skill, I added new poses as my body helped to intuitively remember. The body cells have distinct memory.
Being at home means you still can do yoga poses at home or anywhere, even if you usually relied on attending in-person classes for form and instruction. If you didn’t learn yoga foundations, you can take the extra step and watch YouTube videos or take virtual classes.
Here’s a good way to begin:
Sit on your yoga mat or on a brick with your sit bones (the yoga language for your bottom), and stretch your legs out into a “V.” Reach down on each side of your legs to your feet, or as far down on your legs as you can.
We sit down, lay down, and stand too much in our daily lives. Just by sitting in this unique pose and doing seat yoga poses, allows your legs, back and arms to stretch in a different position than it normally is in.
That’s the name of the game. Our bodies want us to stay limber and stretch other muscles and parts of our body.
I have a kneeling pose that I particularly like that feels good, where I crouch down almost to the floor. I prefer this over bending down. If you like roller skating as I did back in the day, then you know this pose from the game called “shoot the duck” where you crouched down with bent knees as far as you could and extended one leg straight out.
That takes some balancing and flexibility. Usually, one leg was better or stronger than the other on any day. Then you rolled yourself forward using the law of motion and force and tried to make it under the limbo bar without knocking it over.
This can be a metaphor for life in finding balance, as on your yoga mat or floor, you can go from balancing your body from feet on the ground to your tippy toes in this similar duck pose.
In this yoga duck pose (I made up the name so won’t find it researching!), I like to flip through books and recipes, look inside the oven when a bake is completing, or clean floor spots in this familiar pose.
I don’t know why, but it’s a comfortable position for me. It’s a balancing pose that stretches the back, and rounds out the spine. Similarly, you can find the comfortable positions that give yoga a new name (and some of these poses can even cure you of aches and pains).
You may like this crouch (not couch) pose, or make up your own. The point is to try new bends as often as you can remember.
Without weight and while standing, you can observe when you touch your toes, and then try to reach your ankles. You can prefer to bend down with your knees bent or bend at your torso (not everyone can do this). Try attempting both and seeing how that feels.
This torso stretching is particularly good for your back and hamstrings that can get really tight if not used often. Remember in school gym class, how they started out with stretches so you wouldn’t hurt yourself?
Besides our backs and back of legs, another area that often gets ignored is the arms. As much as you can throughout the day, move them back behind you. That also stretches your shoulder muscles that can get sore. If you work on a computer all day, you can find ways to counteract hunching forward with your typing keyboard hands, and arms.
One season I went to physical therapy because I had a daily right arm and shoulder pain that wouldn’t go away. It was nagging for relief from daily right-handed motion overuse, and typing contracts all day.
That’s how voice technology can help our future aging and aching bodies.
Anyway, from my own testing, I figured out which arm stretch would make a difference and correct the pain problem after months and years. That was by self-discovery because no one can pinpoint where your pain actually is, but You, and you alone.
Especially if you didn’t get in an accident or the pain point doesn’t show up as an injury on a scan. Having had multiple x-ray scans reviewed by an orthopedic physician and chiropractor, I felt I went round and round with the same issue and was left to come up with my own solutions.
In hindsight, that’s where I should have started… but when you don’t know, you don’t know.
I found that if I took my right arm out and raised it to shoulder level like an airplane wing, and then I bent my wrist straight down, then that caused tightness and sometimes slight pain that went up to my entire arm through the main radial nerve, and that corrected the problem. ...So simple! All I needed to do was stretch in the right way. I call this Airplane Wing Pose… just kidding!
And then when I took the airplane arm wing back about 45 degrees and bent my wrist straight down, that gave another tight stretch that is what I needed to provide pain relief. Hallelujah!
So my suggestion is if you have any slight aches or pains and there’s no known injury, start with questioning how that could have come about.
If nothing concrete emerges searching your thoughts, then try light and gentle stretches. Moving your body is healing for daily wear and tear symptoms and maybe just what the doctor ordered!
Not moving your body can be just as hurtful to your body, as moving is to an injury.
If you did possibly hurt yourself, that can come from something as simple as bumping a table corner or carrying a bag of groceries too heavy without bending your knees, then that can be a deeper injury like a sprain to the body. Your resilient body will heal over time, but needs rest instead of movement.
An example of this is when you have a swelling inflammation. You could apply ice in a ziplock plastic bag (not a bag of frozen vegetables that isn’t cold enough).
If a body area is sore or has tired muscles, then a heating pad and stretching can help, but that’s if you have determined there’s no inflammation. If you’re not sure, you’re better off trying ice and seeing if it improves over a few days.
Then when you’re getting better, start gradual, light yoga poses and stretching again.
Sensitively figuring out in discernment what your body needs is the healing balance. When or if you should explore medical help over self-diagnosis is an individual question.
Implementing yoga, stretching, and movement is almost always beneficial, as that’s what they have you do in rehabilitation.
With the comfortable yoga poses and stretches you come up with, you can use those as starting points to create other poses that your body will be thankful you did to take care of yourself.
As you become aware, you get to know other parts of your body and that helps you to become more flexible.
If you’re someone who believes you’re not flexible, change that to you are getting flexible every time you stretch. Your body and mind (and mind-body balance) are your most powerful tools and assets to invest in, so you can keep doing all that you do daily.
Butt exercises (or glute exercises) are the most impactful for overall body. And you can combine gym, home yoga, and warm up exercises to tighten butt muscles that help your daily physical activity…. and not just from the slimmer fitting clothes.
Learn below why that is and what you can do to easily get your derriere more toned and in shape…
If you’ve ever been to physical therapy, the approach to restorative body healing uses repetitive movements, such as core, arm, leg, and glute (butt) exercises.
Like yoga, physical therapy exercises are healthy and help to increase your flexibility, strength, and balance.
When you’re not healing from an injury, your body is malleable and wants YOU to work out.
That’s our natural way, like horses and greyhound dogs that are born to race.
If they’re not galloping and running, they’ve lost the opportunity to do what they’re happily born to do. We as humans, similarly are naturally meant to think, be and do.
When we take the opportunity to get active and move, we gain energy and better our health, and that makes us feel better.
If your body could speak, it would say, “put me to work.”But your mind shares back, “I don’t feel like it,”…and then that puts an end to your physical activity. Your mind wins and you actually lose in that moment.
But if you could convince your mind that exercise is easy, effortless… oh, and fun! …whoaa, that could be a game-changer, and your mind, body and you could all be on the same page.
I’ve found (and maybe you agree), that if you find an easy, almost effortless, and rewarding routine, then you would continue doing (like your lifelong healthy eating diet plan)…
On that mission, I discovered some good butt exercises (described below), that give our overall delicate bodies, better results with little effort, that never gets old, and help you stay young and ageless.
Not to mention, the benefit of exercising without a gym. You can do these exercises when you just need a break (instead of opening the fridge for a snack or when you want to watch a few minutes of television).
If you do get to the gym… we love our gyms! then be sure to make use of the expensive and well-maintained machines.
Good Butt Exercises For Impact
Let’s start with your glute muscles. Your largest muscles are in your gluteus maximus (butt) and quadriceps (lower thigh just above your knees).
One of the best machines you can use is the leg press machine that stretches both, using weight.
This will give a killer toned bottom… and are the best butt exercises you can do to fit in your favorite jeans!
If you have access to a gym, then take advantage of that. It’s a machine that looks like a recumbent bike with a big rectangle attached at the end where your feet will rest.
If you don’t have any specific leg or knee weaknesses (or injuries), start at more pounds than you would with arm weights.
As a female, I comfortably lift 20 pounds total for dumb bell arm weights, and lifting 5 times that for my legs. Starting a little lower is safe and smart, but that gives you some idea.
That’s because your glutes are strong muscles and are used regularly every time you get up and down.
It’s doable even if you’re a 100-120 pound female (I’ve tested). It’s possible to increase the leg weight above your actual weight. That’s how powerful your leg and butt muscles are.
At first, I recommend trying this for 2-3 repetitions of 10 press exercises (20-30 total), but don’t get on this machine every day.
Once or twice per week and giving yourself some rest is good for any muscle group.
If you’re unsure of the weight, you can always start with less weight such as 55-80 lbs, and gradually increase as you warmup.
Ideally, the next day from this butt and leg workout, you should feel something, or a slight tightness, but be able to fully move without pain or any inability. You want to test your experience, and gradually increase weight.
If you find you feel zero soreness the next day, don’t be too shy to add an extra 10 pounds for the leg press, as you want to challenge your muscles in a good way.
Lifting weights has different exercise goals than say yoga. Both have developing strength goals, but in yoga, you’re using your body weight so you can also focus on stretching, flexibility, and balance.
In weight training, you want to be careful because you can hurt yourself (if you don’t stay focused on your deliberate and safe movements).
Without using weights in yoga, like say in Fish Pose where your head is hanging backward, you can still hurt yourself, as you’re holding up your 10-20 pound head. So you still want to test and check your body form in yoga.
At Home Overall and Good Glute Exercises
If you don’t have access to a gym (sometimes I didn’t) or it’s not convenient, you can discover great at-home exercises like I did.
You can do this for the leg press exercises I mentioned above, without a machine.
You can do these impactful glute exercises against a wall. You would want to do more repetitions for the same or greater results than on the machine.
To start, my first tip is to invest in a set of dumbbell weights if you don’t already own a pair.
It’s a vital tool for building strength. I use 10-pound weights that I recommend for your first set of weights. You can grow into them.
For lighter weights, you can get creative and use items like full water bottles.
Ten-pound weights come in handy also if you want to prop a door open and don’t have a stopper, or you need to flatten out a rolled-up poster or rug. …Just some additional multi-purpose ideas!
But back to the leg press exercise… you can stand against a closed door that I recommend so you don’t accidentally make scruff marks on the wall. (Doors are usually painted with a heavier duty, shinier gloss paint.)
So then up against the wall or door, bend your knees so that your legs and feet form a 90 degree right angle to the floor.
It’s okay to be greater than 90 degrees like 110 degrees, but not less than 90 degrees to protect parts of your body. Aren’t you so glad you learned geometry in school (…remember the protractor tool?).
Then re-check and be sure your back is completely flat to the door or wall so you have full support.
And from there, also check to see if you can see your toes (you want to make sure they’re not behind your knees).
Then once you have the right form, move up and down against the door or wall, with your arms and hands naturally hanging down by your side (and looking straight ahead).
When you first start off, just get used to the motion without weights, and then you can add a water bottle or a lightweight on each hand.
Then gradually add more weight, like the 10-pound weights.
If you want to make an impact on your body, you’ll want to add at least the 10-pound weights when you’re ready.
The other alternative to this at-home leg press exercise is to lay flat on your back.
Get in a 90-degree angle with your back/butt to the floor and rest your feet on a wall or solid piece of furniture (about 1-2 feet off the ground).
Then, push hard into the wall or solid surface.
It won’t be as good on your glutes as the leg press machine, but you’ll get some resistance like a leg press.
And for daily maintenance, get your steps in and take the stairs instead of the elevator. That will help you maintain your butt exercises and get ready for the next time you’re hiking a mountain or using a good butt exercise machine.
Butt exercises are critical for your lower body activity, as many muscles there help you in everyday life.
Author Brandy @ Healthy Happy Life Secrets
Equipment
leg press
ankle weights
Instructions
Use an exercise machine like a seated leg press. Start at a lower weight setting and gradually raise. Also change the distance settings as they activate different glute muscles.
Do active Bridge yoga poses on a yoga mat to flex and relieve stress in back and butt.
Do Donkey kick (back) standing. Add ankle weights to increase challenge.
Ride a bicycle either indoor or stationery.
Lunges with appropriate weights either standing in place or alternating while moving forward. Do repeated sets.
Home exercise program habits are a great way to get your exercise and healthy energy jolt in if you only have a few minutes.
Since the pandemic days, most of have tried or incorporated a video or home exercise routine. And for some this has stuck and is a regular plan over gyms or in-person fitness classes. And wherever you choose to exercise, your body will appreciate. You can check your minutes, stand, and move points. 🎯
A regular home exercise program is good for relieving anxiety and daily de-stressing if you need a motivator during low energy times. You don’t need equipment, just your body as weight.
You can even do simple exercises laying on your bed, a mat, or a floor. You don’t need equipment other than your body. That’s what yoga is.
You can do leg lifts and invisible bicycle movements while you’re watching shows. Those are low-intensity but they add up. And may keep you away from the couch potato moves that you’re trying to get away from.
Using just your body, you don’t have a clunky piece of equipment that’ll become a towel rack in months. Most of us have all done similar where we had a good exercise plan in mind and it didn’t pan out. Keeping things simple always pays off!
And implementing a simple home exercise program can be the change maker to your feeling happy, energetic, and successful today… in addition to being more fit.
Because if your mind is satisfied and feeling accomplished, then you feel happy. And feeling happy is all that matters over an activity you don’t enjoy and it feels like work. Amen!?
Getting oxygen circulating to your brain also is the energy boost you need to get things going! And in that positive direction, exercise can motivate you to eat healthier and lighter that helps your gut. For some people, exercise is a good activity to do while fasting especially in the first few hours where you reap several benefits.
Today we know that most of our happy hormones are made in our gut so we want to keep our gut happy and healthy. Plus, there’s a gut-brain connection in the body-mind connection that affects our daily moods, outlook, and attitudes. 🌱
With our world back together, let’s keep up our steps. 👣
Easy home exercise program ideas needing no equipment:
Cardio exercise and high intensity interval training (HIIT) get the heart rate up that is one life-giving activity every human can use. We also improve our breathing and ability to control our breath longer.
Exercise examples include:
Burpees push-up and jump-up combos are a great way to ease tension from staying in cramped quarters. You can burn off pent-up Pitta anger or Vata anxiety you hold in seconds.
Plus, exercise helps the Kapha wake up and all of us sleep better.
If you want to stay indoors or have outdoor allergies, running (in place), and doing jumping jacks works too.
Online classes with yoga, barre, and pilates can keep you engaged and in a routine if you need more focused stimulation.
Most of us have taken a class or two this way that you can even find for free on YouTube channels like the Well+Good channel I subscribe to where you can get a balanced workout.
Here are some other home exercise program moves you can create for relieving anxiety and overall good physical fitness health:
House stair master substitute. If you live under a roof with stairs, run up and down the stairs several times. Then when you come down the, slowly walk down backward (recommended if you have carpeted stairs only so as not to slip).
If you live in a condo or apartment, opt to take the stairs instead of the elevator. And if you live in a one-story home, you can do repetitive leg lifts.
You can switch the mindset of parking closest to your destination. Park far away and avoid the potential car dings, get the shaded parking spots, and also get your exercise points in.
You can also practice mindfulness and get present with your body and how it feels in each muscle movement.
As we age we start to feel joints more and we lose muscle. And that’s all the more reason to keep up the exercise!
Natural steps stretch your hamstrings and other muscle parts of your legs and buttocks. Your gluteus maximus has the largest muscle group in your body, so focusing on these muscles will provide a high reward for your efforts.
Jump rope (or jumping jacks). Take a piece of rope and add a small weight to the bottom. Then start jumping rope. Do repetitions of forward and backward jumps for variety.
This (and hula hoops… remember those?) is great for tiring kids out with lots of energy. Of you can bounce a stress ball against the wall and play catch for stretching arms naturally.
…Jumping jacks are also a great way to get your blood circulating from head to toe. These are great to do especially if you’ve been sitting for a long time, and your legs or feet have fallen asleep.
Daily sit-ups. Do daily repetitions. Your stomach supports your back that you need for just about every movement.
If you have a longer torso, a better situp would be half crunches where you don’t go back down to the floor fully. You will still get the stomach benefits. And try to hold the crunch longer to reap more muscle benefit.
A variations is you lay flat on your back, raise your legs straight up to the ceiling and then lift up your torso and try to reach your hands to your ankles. That’ll hurt good!
Rest, and then continue and do as many reps as you can.
Lift dumbell weights or use milk gallons filled with water that have handles.
But before you do that move, add in a warm up routine. Yoga works well for this before you lift weights when muscles can be cold, tight, or contracted. Never skip the warmup part even for a home exercise program that you’re in charge of..
And one exercise that you probably haven’t counted…
Cleaning and straightening the house stretches your muscles and is exercise. When you’re cleaning, you’re actually doing yoga. You have to bend, stretch and squat to reach every nook and cranny in the house. Your cleaning poses are working smaller muscles. When you look at it that way, cleaning isn’t a chore and can be relaxing. 😊
That is a good segue into yoga that has great physical and mental health benefits, such as helping you calm, reducing anxiety, stress, tension, and depression.
If you don’t have a yoga mat, you can use beach or old towels (aren’t you glad you kept those?).
Start with deep breathing. For calming, I’ve modified my own yoga breathing technique. I found that inhaling deeply through your nose and exhaling long breaths through your mouth (for full air release from lungs) are most satisfying for releasing tension.
You instantly feel lighter.
But you can also stick with traditional yoga breaths through the nose.
Performing these breathing exercises increase the flow of oxygen, releases tension, slows the mind, improves concentration, and calms emotions.
When you’re ready to start your poses, keep in mind you can do your own modifications. Yoga poses should feel good for you, like a good stretch. Poses should not hurt. Everyone’s bodies are different so adjust the variation of the pose to your body.
Use: in any yoga pose, you can hurt yourself to be mindful and careful.
Test the waters on each pose without trying the maximum stretch on your first few sessions. Like the effects from any exercise in an exercise home program, you won’t know how the pose affected your body until a day or two later.
You can have a flexible torso, but a stiff neck or back. Everyone has a different range of motion.
We all need daily stretching and cardio to stay limber, healthy, and fit. The goals in yoga are flexibility, balance, and strength.
The best way to learn yoga poses is to see the pose and hear the pointers on what you don’t want to do.
From your home, you can watch and listen to videos on each pose to see the proper body alignment and learn about the intended goal of the pose.
Yoga Exercises For Your Home Exercise Program
Standing poses:
Sun Salutation poses — good for morning heart openers. We have a tendency to cave our bodies inward and look down. Sun salutation help to open the body.
Mountain poses (commonly referred to as tadasana) — aligns the spine and restores balance to the body and mind.
Start mountain pose standing with hands in a position like the prayer emoji where you’re praying at your heart center
Then raise your arms up towards the ceiling.
Fold the entire torso down towards the floor, and let arms hang down (in forwarding bend pose). Hands can rest on feet or as far down on your calves as you can.
Forward bend poses — helps back, spine, and back of hamstrings
Standing or sitting poses: Do Cactus Arms throughout the day to open your shoulders. Good especially if you hunch over a lot, are straining on the computer, or work in a kitchen or factory standing for long periods of time.
Yoga Floor poses:
Cat/Cow (knees and hands-on floor) — good back and spine stretch. Tabletop is the neutral position in between Cat and Cow poses.
Downward dog (feet and hands flat on the floor) — releases tension in the shoulders, hamstrings
Chair with hands in the air (feet on the floor) — energizes the body, strengthens the entire leg muscles and lower back
Sitting poses:
Spinal twist — helps the spine to rid of stiffness
Hero — keeps your knees flexible
Front on mat poses:
Cobra — expands the rib cage, chest, and abdomen
Bow — strengthens the back, opens the chest, tones the thigh and buttocks
Half locust — helps buttocks, back of thighs, posture; improves circulation
You could do a Plank pose (great for arms like push-ups) and then lower down into a Cobra, Baby Cobra, or Sphinx pose as a (Vinyasa) flow.
If you’re new to yoga, many yoga poses have animal, nature, or object names. Their pose names inspire peace, beauty, and purpose. For more inspiration, check out these 100 yoga poses.
Yoga can help keep intention focused on staying healthy and provide calm, gentle exercises for anxiety and stress reduction.
And to reward yourself in all your hard work and to cool down, how about a low-fat blueberry sherbet.
