Yoga Benefits Series: Inversions

Benefits of Inversions in Yoga:

Inversion Helps Improve Circulation

The cardiovascular system is your body’s transportation system, carrying food and oxygen to your body’s cells. It also retrieves blood from your legs and lower torso, carrying it upwards against the force of gravity. Inversion allows your body to work with gravity to ease the circulation process. 

Calms the mind and relieves stress

A full body stretch upside down can be rejuvenating and help the body to effectively relax. A study conducted by physiotherapist LJ Nose found that EMG activity (a measure of muscle tension) declined over 35% within ten seconds of inverting. Showing how helpful inversions can be in relieving the tension and pain in your muscles that is often caused by stress.

Reduce Pain in Overworked Muscles

Athletes prone to stiffness or sore muscles after a workout can benefit from the lymphatic wash provided by inversion. The lymphatic system has no pump, putting the body upside down helps speed up the process of removing waste from the body.

Strengthens Ligaments

Ligaments are flexible but not very elastic. They can tear when stretched too much. The gentle reverse loading and movement that occurs while you invert strengthens ligaments and connective tissue.

Can Reduce Shrinking

Most people will lose from 1/2 inch – 2 inches in height during their lifetime because of thinning discs. As a baby, your discs are 90% water. The water content in the discs decreases to 70% by age 70. An active inversion program can help maintain more of your original height.

Improve Balance and Body Awareness

Inversion helps to develop balance awareness, which occurs when the upper regions of the inner ear are stimulated.

Enhance ability to concentrate and remain focused

Inversions help increase oxygen flow to the brain, which consumes 25 percent of the body’s oxygen’s intake.

More Benefits of Inversions:

Cardiovascular:

Flipping upside down encourages delivery of fresh blood to your heart, which provides more efficient circulation. It is similar to what aerobics may offer. These positions are also said to improve lung tissue quality. Being upright the majority of your day causes the lower lung tissue to saturate with blood, but inverting will ventilate the upper lungs, ensuring a more even oxygen-to-blood exchange that promotes healthier tissue. Being upside down also increases blood flow to your head, relieving the heart of some of its duties and temporarily lowering blood pressure and heart rate.

Lymphatic:

Your lymphatic system, according to "Yoga Journal," is a closed pressure system with one-way valves that keep lymph moving to the heart. This system is responsible for waste removal, immune-system response and fluid balance. When your body inverts, this stimulates your lymphatic system and, in turn, strengthens your immune system.

Endocrine:

Your endocrine system is responsible for hormone delivery. Inversions, especially shoulder stands, are recommended for pre-menopausal and menopausal women due to the belief that the pose stimulates the thyroid and parathyroid glands, which regulates metabolism. Most inversions will stimulate your pituitary gland, which is your master gland, and promote a positive state of well-being.

Nervous:

Inversions may also stimulate cerebrospinal fluid, or CSF, which is the juice of the central nervous system that flows from the brain to the spinal cord. In headstand, the top of the skull experiences pressure that could promote elasticity in the cranial bones, thus increasing the production of CSF to the ventricles of the brain, according to "Yoga Journal."

Back Relief:

Years of gravity's pull and spinal compression often wreak havoc on people's backs, creating pain that most cannot explain. Inverting can be a natural way of counteracting the pull of gravity.