Moving your body every day is the most important thing you can do for your health. You want to make sure you know how to balance it well.
I’m all for any type of exercise, and I don’t prefer one to the other. I love weight lifting. I also love yoga. they complement each other very well.
However, the concept of Yin and Yang really nails perfectly the balance between good exercise regime.
See, overdoing weights and cardio 5-6 times a week can give you good results in your physique, but they swing the pendulum to one side, they put you in a more Yang state.
In Yang there is heat in your body, there is expansion, there is sweat, sprints, fast pace and high intensity.
Yang needs to be balanced by Yin. They cannot exist without each other. Excessive Yang creates too much heat in our bodies, in our mind. Can make us more irritable, anxious, nervous and prone to just snap at people and situations.
Yin instead is slower, is steady, is recovery and is stillness. So exercises like yoga, yin yoga, stretching, meditation practices, and massage or self-massage.
Going to one opposite side of the pendulum to the other leaves our bodies to be stuck, without thriving and we become kind of limited.
Knowing when to stop, if our muscles hurt, if we are tired, acknowledging that we are too Yang, and we need to stop.
Maybe by sleep in for another 10 minutes, or instead of going to another gym sesh go for a walk by the beach and immerse your legs in cold water, or maybe sit and do some breath work or meditation?
Let’s give our bodies the break they need to grow, recover better and have that perfect balance of Yin and Yang in our exercise routine.
Tuning in and listen to our bodies is a virtue that we need to master in these fast-paced times with excessive expectation on ourselves.
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