Yamuna Body Rolling

Yamuna Body Rolling: The Experience

Visualize this: you are sitting on a beautiful red ball and sinking it into your muscle with every exhalation. You feel the muscle release and elongate and simultaneously, you are learning to balance on that ball with the help of the pressure and counter-pressure between the ball and your body weight.

All this is quite relaxing and with every bit of muscle release, you feel a bit exhilarated.

Welcome to yamuna body rolling, a way to love your body while toning your muscles and massaging your bones. It sounds too good to be true. But it really delivers what it promises – health and wellness at the level of the muscles, bones and nerves.

Yamuna body rolling is a ground breaking approach to fitness.

Yes, it works with stretches and movements. It also integrates breath into the movement and uses the body weight to increase core strength, but what is special about it?

Yamuna body rolling helps you target specific muscle groups in order to loosen tight areas and improves your range of motion. It elongates the muscles, increases blood supply to a particular area (if necessary) and rejuvenates from the inside. In fact, it can be classified as a healing and wellness tool, masquerading as a form of fitness.

The routine is meant to make you aware of different muscle groups by starting at the origin of each muscle and logically working downwards to lengthen the muscle, even as the bone and surrounding tissue get kneaded.

It works by encouraging the body to give into the gravitational pull. The consequent sinking in (into the ball) motion eases any tension in the muscle. It doubles as a weight bearing training and a deep tissue massage all at once.

One’s awareness of the body deepens because alignment and thrift in motion is experienced. It is something one experiences (and notices) after practicing this lovely art for a few days (or weeks, as the case may vary from one individual to another.)

Yamuna body rolling can be used to repair damages in the muscular-skeletal system where recovery tends to be slow and painful. The changes that occur in the body as a result of body rolling are positive and permanent. I can offer personal testimony to that.

This brings me to contemplating the deeper ramifications of an exercise routine that doubles up as tool to develop self-awareness, especially of the body.

Within the framework of a work out, deep relaxation and letting go can take place. The simple act of grounding your sit bones into your mat can release a host of muscles and bring your awareness so close to your body.

And, if we think of body movements as identical to thoughts, then the gap between two movements can be the still space of relaxation and quiet – a space where we let the body slip into deep rest before the next movement inevitably occurs.

In this way, we can take even movement, like we do thoughts, from unconscious and innumerable, to conscious and finite.

The philosophy of a purely physical letting go translates eventually (and with much practice) into a mental and then an emotional letting go as well. This is why we are repeatedly reminded during yoga practice to remain absolutely still but by the same token, completely relaxed (after assuming a certain posture) – in order to experience a still mind.

Movement originates in the brain and in the body – that means the thinking aspects of the brain can influence movement. The mind is powerful – better to use its power to enhance your state of being rather than disrupt it.

Finally, in any fitness routine, whatever the nature and the purported benefits, a measure of compassion on the self will go a long way. Even in releasing muscle, acceptance is key.