In the modern world, a lot of us find ourselves bound to a desk for hours a day for our jobs. Not only does this affect our mental wellbeing, leaving us feeling stressed and tired. But our working lifestyles can create a build-up of tension in the body and causes problems like back ache, tight hip flexors, stiff neck and hunched shoulders. The solution? Yoga postures for the office. The benefits of yoga are countless. It has a positive affect on your mental, physical, and emotional health, and the great thing is you don’t even need to sign up to a gym or yoga studio to start reaping the benefits. We’ve devised some simple desk yoga poses that you can do from the office chair which will help you relieve mental and physical stress today.

The following simple yoga stretches can be done at any point in the working day to help restore some balance in the body, lubricate your muscles and joints, relieve stress and re-energize your mind and spirit. We’re calling it Office Yoga and you can repeat each movement for five breaths.

You can start by taking some slow mindful head rolls, clockwise and counter-clockwise. Close your eyes, really feel the weight of the head and the neck and relax the shoulders away from the ears.

Take a seated cat-cow by placing both feet firmly on the ground, bring your hands to your knees, and inhale to arch the back and gaze up, and exhale to round the spine and bring the chin to the chest.

Next, some seated crescent moons: inhale the arms above the head into prayer mudra, and exhale to lean to the right, inhale back to centre, and exhale lean the left.

Interlace the palms behind you, inhale to create space in the chest as you draw the hands away from the body. Exhale to fold the body forward over the legs and reach the arms forwards overhead.

We have two options for pigeon pose variation at your desk. Option one: cross the left ankle over the right knee, keeping a flex in the foot to protect the knee, and gently bring the chest forwards, back straight. Option two: utilize your desk! Stand up and bring the left knee parallel to the edge of the desk, hinge at the hips and gently fold forward.

You could also do some desk chaturangas or yoga push up variations. Making sure you desk is stable enough to support some of your body weight, place hands shoulder width apart and walk the legs away from the desk. Exhale to bend the elbows to 90 degrees, hugging the elbows toward the ribs. Inhale to press back up.

Finish with some simple seated twists, inhale to lengthen, exhale to twist. And some wrist and finger stretches – you can clasp the hands and roll the wrists, turn your fingers to face you and use the opposite hand to apply some pressure, and “flash” the hands to bring some energy to the fingers.

 For more details: https://www.krantiyoga.com/most-common-types-of-yoga.html