{"id":9216,"date":"2022-12-02T20:18:33","date_gmt":"2022-12-02T20:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yogajournal.com\/?p=106864"},"modified":"2022-12-02T20:18:33","modified_gmt":"2022-12-02T20:18:33","slug":"our-10-most-popular-yoga-practices-of-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/2022\/12\/02\/our-10-most-popular-yoga-practices-of-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"Our 10 Most Popular Yoga Practices of 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"
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With December (and the holiday season<\/a>) in full swing, we\u2019re taking a look back at our most popular yoga practices of 2022. This year, you may have focused on developing strength or building flexibility. You may have been recovering from an injury or signing up for a yoga teacher training. These are the practices you turned to\u2014and we agree that they are great ones. We\u2019ve collected them here in the hope that they\u2019ll continue to offer you relief, solace or a chance to deepen your practice in the months ahead.<\/p>\n

The 10 most popular yoga practices of 2022<\/h2>\n
\"Man
(Photo: Andrew Clark)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

1. 6 Essential Stretches for Tight Hamstrings and Hip Flexors<\/a><\/h3>\n

Ever find yourself fixated on stretching a particular part of your body? It makes sense to seek a solution for whatever your situation, whether you need stretches for tight hamstrings or poses to ease low back pain.<\/p>\n

But despite your desire to zero in on a specific area, that\u2019s not how your body works. Everything is interconnected. Just as you can\u2019t fully appreciate the experience of daylight without also experiencing night, you can\u2019t stretch a particular muscle without acknowledging\u2014or at least inadvertently incorporating\u2014the muscles that support it.<\/p>\n

\"A
(Photo: Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

2. 6 Yoga Poses for High Blood Pressure<\/a><\/h3>\n

High blood pressure\u2014otherwise known as hypertension\u2014is among the most common health conditions in the U.S. According to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, nearly half of adults have hypertension, yet many people don\u2019t even know they have it.<\/p>\n

But just because high blood pressure is so common doesn\u2019t mean you should ignore it. Hypertension can put people at risk for serious health conditions, such as heart attacks or strokes. Lifestyle changes top the list of steps you can take to improve or prevent hypertension\u2014and research shows that yoga can play a crucial role in lowering high blood pressure.<\/p>\n

\"Woman
(Photo: Shutterstock)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

3.  5 Stretches for Low Back Pain Relief<\/a><\/h3>\n

I was playing with my son recently and threw out my back while we were wrestling. This wasn\u2019t the first time this had happened, but it was the first time the pain was so intense I had a hard time even getting up from the floor.<\/p>\n

As a single mother of a toddler, I don\u2019t have the option of spending the day lying still and recovering. Instead, I continued to move through the pain. Inspired by my yoga practice, I engaged in some simple stretches that I thought might bring low back pain relief. This turned out to be a blessing. My recovery was much faster than in past years when I was suffering and didn\u2019t let myself move at all.<\/p>\n

(Photo: Ty Milford)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

4. 6 Essential Stretches for (Intense) Lower Back Pain<\/a><\/h3>\n

Our instinct, when we experience breathtakingly intense lower back pain, is typically either to remain completely still or try to work it out, stretching beyond our comfort level and yanking ourselves into positions that are completely inappropriate at the moment.<\/p>\n

These are literally the worst things you can do. When your back is in a tightened and traumatized state, these approaches further aggravate the situation (and your mood) and impede healing. Instead, you want to seek out passive stretches for lower back pain relief.<\/p>\n

\"Woman
(Photo: Andrew Clark; Clothing; Calia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

5. 11 Yoga Poses to Unlock the Deep Hip Opening Your Body Is Craving<\/a><\/h3>\n

It\u2019s said that we store a lot of emotions in our hips (if you\u2019ve ever started crying during Pigeon Pose, you know what that means), and that should come as no surprise\u2014the hips are one of the most important and complex areas of the body.<\/p>\n

\"Three
(Photo: Rocketmann Team\/Pexels)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

6. 12 Poses for Strong Legs<\/a><\/h3>\n

Summertime sends us outside\u2014walking, running, hiking, biking, or standing still trying to catch a breeze. What do these activities have in common? They require us to use the power of our legs. In fact, many of our recreational and mundane activities require strong lower limbs. And while summer shorts and swimsuits put our legs on display, that doesn\u2019t mean we need to stop at simply healthy-looking<\/em> legs. We want legs with power.<\/p>\n

\"A
(Photo: Ty Milford)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

7. The Best Stretches for When You\u2019re Recovering from Low Back Pain<\/a><\/h3>\n

I know a lot of yoga students who experience low back pain. And I\u2019ve observed that many of them keep a more limited range of motion in their yoga practice and their everyday movements than their actual pain or tightness necessitates. I think a lot of it has to do with the underlying fear that pain is imminent, which keeps students from moving their bodies in certain ways.<\/p>\n

(Photo: Renee Choi)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

8. The Absolute Best Yoga Poses to Practice After Sitting All Day<\/a><\/h3>\n

So many of us find ourselves sitting all day at a computer. It\u2019s very likely the reason why yoga teachers constantly hear students complain of tight hips and back pain. When we remain seated for hours at a time, our hips and knees are in constant flexion, and if we hunch forward over a screen, we\u2019re in prolonged protraction of the shoulder blades and flexion of the spine, which over time can cause aches and poor posture. Prolonged sitting also puts significant stress on our low back as well as our hips.<\/p>\n

\""Seated<\/figure>\n

9. 5 Morning Stretches That You Can Do From Bed<\/a><\/h3>\n

Mornings can be tricky. You may like to imagine yourself leisurely taking yourself through stretches, scribbling peacefully in your gratitude journal, and sipping tea from your luxuriously soft white sheets, the reality is that most mornings you\u2019re more likely to silently curse your alarm clock and groggily fiddle with the coffee machine before you can even think about taking time for yourself at some point during the day.<\/p>\n

\"A
(Photo: Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

10. 4 Underrated Yoga Poses You\u2019re Overlooking In Your Practice<\/a><\/h3>\n

Most of us are creatures of habit: We take our morning coffee the same way, follow the same route to work, sleep on the same side of the bed. With all the decisions we need to make each day, and with decision fatigue a very real thing, it\u2019s understandable that we repeat certain behaviors in order to think less. Our yoga practice often follows this tendency too, with the same poses, variations, or transitions appearing repeatedly, whether we have our own home practice or are teachers leading others through sequences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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You returned to these over and over again. <\/p>\n

The post Our 10 Most Popular Yoga Practices of 2022<\/a> appeared first on Yoga Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[37,35,36],"class_list":["post-9216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ayurveda","tag-blogs","tag-yoga","tag-yogacourseware"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}