How to Use Flexibility Training for Stress Relief
As much fun flexibility training can be when it comes to splits or backends, it’s a tool for overall well-being. While it is great to improve your mobility and joint health, stretching is a powerful way to practice mindfulness and to manage stress, but it has to be approached with intention. When you focus in on your flexibility training, the practice encourages deeper breathing, body awareness and even emotional release…which all contribute to stress relief.
Calming the Nervous System with Breathing
When working on your flexibility training, there are movements that are dynamic and speed up your breath, but in most movements it’s slower, and moving into deep stretches naturally encourages more controlled breathing. We instinctively slow down and take deep breaths to relax into the posture. Which is why you’ll always hear me in class reminding you to not hold your breath.
Cats sometimes purr as a way to self-soothe, and it activates their parasympathetic nervous system, shifting the body out of “fight or flight” mode and into “rest and digest” mode-which is exactly what deep breathing can do for us. The result? A sense of calm, improved focus, and reduced tension and stress.
Flex Tip: Add a side bend into your day right now, take a long inhale, and an even longer exhale. Notice how your body naturally moves deeper into the pose to get more of the stretch and release stress!
Related: Mindful Stretching: Incorporating Flexibility Training into Your Self-Care Routine
The Path to Mindfulness is Body Awareness
While breathing is probably the main cue I will give you in every class you take with me, I would say the second is to adjust as your body needs to, however that looks. Adjusting and fine-tuning a stretch to feel right for you does require you to hone in and pay close attention to any physical sensations you may be having. That practice of noticing and responding by adjusting is a form of movement-based mindfulness.
Over time, fostering this heightened body awareness will strengthen your mind-body connection, and will help you become more present and attuned to your needs, even outside of your flexibility training time. But not only that, but this forces you to focus inward to stay present in your body, not focusing on any external stressors.
Flex Tip: The next time you have a moment to do Cat Cow, or any stretch, try to notice the small details. Where do you feel the stretch, does your breath change, and how is your body responding to the position as you move through it, or hold it?
Movement will Release Stored Emotions
You know how sometimes when you’re stressed, you won’t even notice you’ve been clenching your jaw for the last four hours, or felt you’ve been holding your shoulders up by your ears for so long it feels weird to relax them? Well, the body doesn’t just hold tension there. Many emotions past stress, like sadness or grief can be held in the body creating more stress and tension but now in a physical way.
Stretching releases this built-up tension by allowing the body to move, open, and offer a sense of relief from the stress. By physically holding tension in the body, it reinforces stress mentally. But, by releasing the muscular tightness, you’re simultaneously signaling to your nervous system that it’s okay and safe to relax. This is often why you will hear stories (or maybe it’s happened to you) where someone will go into a pigeon pose and after holding it will start crying from the release.
Flex Tip: Take a moment to pay attention to your body, and see where it holds tension. If a stretch is feeling real tight and intense, try to visualize the tension melting away as you breathe deeply into that area of the body.
Flexibility training doesn’t always come off as the type of fitness that will leave you feeling relaxed, but it’s honestly a great place to start. And by making it consistent, regularly stretching won’t only reduce stiffness in your body but also enhance your relaxation and reduce stress, emotional well-being and of course the mind-body connection.
Whether you’re unwinding after a long day or setting a mindful tone for your morning, stretching can be a simple yet effective stress-relief tool. That is why in The Garden, I have a whole playlist called Relax & Release which focuses on slower movements to help you become more in touch with yourself to experience the benefits of mindful movement firsthand.
