A popular prop and assistance during your training, the Yoga wheel works well for regular fitness. Designed as per the curvature of your spine, it is most useful during backbends to achieve deeper spinal stretches, improve core strength, open shoulders, and chest, and improve flexibility and balance.
If we wanted to, we all have within us the power to heal ourselves. More of an internal process, healing just needs a ‘trigger’ for the powerful energy within us to channel into the process of healing. The Wheel can act as a trigger here which our body and mind both need to support our yoga journey.
How the Yoga Wheel Helps
The surface of the wheel is cushioned by a material much like the yoga mat and it comes in various sizes. The wheel provides you with the perfect surface to place any part of the body. Rolling on the wheel releases underlying muscular tension and knots. This leads to the lengthening of muscular tissues for better flexibility and range of motion.
The yoga wheel can be used at the end of the day after spending many hours slouched over a computer. Use it to give yourself a massage and it gently stretches and relaxes the back. Place the wheel at strategic positions like under the thigh in a lunge in Ashwasanchalansana or in Hanuman asana, to work on your hamstrings. Regular practice helps in achieving the full split and deep lunges. To improve hip flexibility, use the wheel as a prop in asanas such as Baddhakonasana, Titliasanas and more. Furthermore, it is an effective way to learn new poses and to practice advanced asanas. The unstable hold of the wheel challenges your core strength and provides base support for balancing asanas. This helps in strengthening your stabilizing muscles. For those who fear inversions such as Shirshasana, Pinjamayurasana, etc., the wheel can aid you in your practice.
Wheel yoga helps in strengthening inversions, opening the shoulders and definitely deepening backbends and strengthening and toning of the entire body. It has been scientifically designed to release tension and muscular tightness in the back, chest, shoulders, and abdomen.
Benefits of Yoga Wheel:
- Ideal for those engaged in occupations related to wellness, physical fitness, physiotherapy etc.,
- The Wheel is your personal, portable exercise apparatus.
- Convenient and user-friendly.
- Discover a host of benefits as well as relief for muscles that are prone to stiffness.
- Handy whether at home, work or even in transit.
- Eases out muscle stiffness, improve your flexibility or challenge your physical balance.
- Cushioned body of the Wheel makes it comfortable for you to place different parts of the body without the slightest pain.
- You can stretch out your hamstrings, rest your spine and neck on it, work on your oblique muscles and even get assistance with inversions.
Physical & Mental Health
Hormones (such as estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, cortisol, adrenaline, thyroid hormones) are the body’s crucial chemical substances secreted by glands (pituitary, hypothalamus, adrenal, and thyroid). They circulate through the bloodstream, transferring information and instructions regarding various functions like growth and development, energy levels, and reproduction process, etc.
You can use the wheel for backbends, forward bends, twists, and inverted poses to stimulate all glands, organs, tissues, and cells of the body. This particularly activates the endocrine system which is responsible for the secretion of many of the major hormones. As per the posture, corresponding endocrine glands and organs are gently squeezed, massaged, relaxed, toned, stimulated, and supplied with fresh oxygenated blood. Yoga postures on the wheel also soothe the nervous system – calming and quieting the mind which, in turn, helps to smooth and balance stress hormones.
Thus here we can see that a wheel not only can be helpful in achieving an asana but it can be extremely helpful in relaxing the mind and to balance our emotions as well.
Inputs by Grand Master Akshar, an internationally acclaimed yoga master, spiritual guide, lifestyle coach, and a yoga entrepreneur
