How Long Should You Hold a Yoga Pose?
Thank you to LiveStrong.com for featuring my commentary on how long you should hold a yoga pose!
In yoga, focusing on your form while you're in each pose is important, as well as staying aware of your body and keeping your breath consistent. But here's one more factor to throw in the mix: the length of your hold.
There's no universal variable for how long you should hold a yoga pose — like holding a pose for three breaths or five seconds, for example — because the length of the hold depends on what type of yoga you're doing and what your goals might be.
There are numerous styles of yoga that fall into the Goldilocks area of not too fast and not too slow. These can be Hatha, Iyengar, some forms of hot yoga and Ashtanga. In these classes, you tend to hold poses for about five breaths each, Payne says, and that gives you time to settle in and adjust a pose, but then transition out again at a steady pace.
This length of hold tends to be beneficial for those who want a challenge but also may be new to the practice, Jessica Schatz, RYT, a yoga teacher based in Los Angeles, tells LIVESTRONG.com.
She says a faster practice, like power yoga or a fast vinyasa flow, can feel overwhelming if you don't know your alignment in every pose or you're trying to connect your breath to your movement.
"The meditative nature of yoga and the way you move is all about your breath, so the length of your hold comes down to how that feels in your body," she says.
If you're doing your own sequences at home, or even if you're in person at a class, remember your practice is your practice. If you want to hang out in butterfly pose a little longer, go for it. If you want to move through the classic vinyasa of plank to upward facing dog to downward facing dog at your own pace and with your own breath, that's up to you.
Like many other variables in yoga, playing around with different options can help you personalize the practice in a way that feels nourishing instead of rushed.
Read the full article here.