2 hour meeting answer #2

1) What is the best way in practicing Vinyasa yoga to reduce stress levels?
2) My second answer is the following: To refine and deepen the pose technique when practicing yoga.
3) a) When I practice yoga personally, I notice a significant difference when practicing my poses. For example when doing warrior 1 before, I never really felt that great doing it, but once my instructor corrected me by adjusting my footing by making me take a wider stance and by squaring my hips...I felt the difference almost immediately. The stretch burned in the thighs, but by trying to improve to become more flexible by trying to go deeper, I noticed the aftermath effect was a decrease in muscle tension in my legs, which is a decrease of physical stress.
b) Rizopoulos, Natasha. "Open Your Heart." Upward Facing Dog. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Sept. 2012. <http://www.yogajournal.com/basics/2317>. This article talks about how deepening your pose can make a difference. The article uses the example of downward dog and how deepening the pose really opens up the heart and is beneficial to the body and health of the person practicing.
c) Another example would be just from testimonials from other yoga students. When I talk to them and ask how to reduce stress, they mention how the poses really work for them. They tell me how focusing on the stretch and constantly trying to do it better is like a metaphor for them in the real world to focus on doing things right and to constantly try to get better. This in effect helps them get whatever is stressing them to currently diminish significantly in the weight of which it was weighing them down.
4) The main source that helped me prove this answer is justified is from an article entitled "3 ways to deepen your yoga practice." This source stressed the point of how in yoga, one might focus too much on doing the pose right, but deepening a pose may not always mean exerting more effort. The source stresses the point on how sometimes deepening a pose may mean trying to use the least amount of muscles possible to hold the pose and talks about how this in turn provides the person with more awareness and a sense of relaxation. The awareness and relaxation are opposite of feeling stressed, so by improving technique and deepening a pose, a person can feel less stressed.
5) I plan to continue my study of answer 2 by researching which poses when best reduce tension in the body and which ones are more effective in reducing stress. Some poses are meant for strength, some for the mind, and some for relaxation. I want to look specifically into the relaxation and strength and find out which poses are the best.