Most yoga exercises have one thing in common: achieving relaxation.
Whether you apply dynamic poses with which you can build strong muscles, or gentle stretches, where every part of the body tissue gets a nice healing massage, the final purpose is to increase the level of happiness, well-being and relaxation in your life.
And ultimately, reflect and transmit this level well-being to other people.
Having said this, I hadn’t expected to get a headache from a simple yoga exercise, but I actually did.
This pose is one of the most popular among yogis, both to beginners and advanced, and is called the “Downward-facing dog”.
It is claimed to be one of the most effective poses to release your stress and relax your mind after a hard day at work.
So, after getting back home tired from work, I decided to give it a go.
After a couple of seconds in that pose, and contrary to what is preached in various yoga teaching materials, instead of feeling more relaxed, I started feeling a headache.
My head was facing down, and this headache, to be honest, was not a surprise to me; it was a natural result from holding my head in this position.
However, anything I had read about this yoga pose before, mainly in online articles, had proved to be wrong.
Or, was it just me doing this pose the wrong way?
After that, I moved from the downward-facing dog to another popular pose: the mighty “plank”.
I tried to hold myself as long as I could. I went from thirty to sixty seconds, and then to a bit over two minutes.
At this point I couldn’t hold it anymore, and I let my body collapse on the floor.
Then, all of a sudden, something magical happened: my headache had completely vanished!
My personal experience showed that one yoga exercise can have a very different result than another.
So from now on, every time I want to get a quick headache relief, I hold the plank position for about two minutes, and that’s it!
The headache disappears, just like a miracle!
