Do you frequently wish you had more energy? Do you drink coffee or tea to energize? Caffeine is by far the most-consumed drug worldwide, and the reason is simple: we all want to have more energy.

Unfortunately, caffeine is generally not the best way to get it. A few hours after a caffeine-induced energy boost, your energy levels tend to crash to a new low, requiring ever more caffeine.

Instead, have you tried energizing yourself with yoga? Yoga can provide you with a sustainable energy boost that does not cause your energy levels to plummet later. All you need to do is fine-tune your practice to emphasize the generation of energy. Three simple ways to do that are through increased breath awareness and better posture, an emphasis on mindfulness, and the practice of backbends and inversions.

Energize through your breath

The most important source for yoga’s energy boost is the breath. In our normal unconscious breathing, we typically only use one tenth of our total lung capacity. While that probably provides us with enough oxygen for sedentary activities, this shallow unconscious breathing is generally accompanied by a slouching posture. It is the slouching that robs us of energy because the lack of space in the front of the chest causes us to breathe lower in the torso. Breathing lower in the torso is calming, but it also robs us of energy. Simply breathing consciously through the nose and directing the breath to gently lift the breast bone helps us energize as it moves the breath higher in the torso. Deepening our breath to move more air in and out of the lungs increases this effect as it requires the breast bone to lift more.

The explanation for this effect is that breathing higher up in the torso stimulates the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system. Sympathetic activation, which is sometimes called up-regulation, makes more energy available to the skeletal muscles and causes us to feel more alert.

Energize with mindfulness

Another wonderful source of increased energy is becoming more present in each moment. When you are doing something you don’t find meaningful or useful, you tend to have less energy. However, even when you are doing something you find tedious, like dealing with government bureaucracies or doing the dishes, becoming more present in what you are doing will allow you to transform these tedious tasks and give you a rise in energy levels. If you find your life full of things you struggle to find meaning in, then it may be time to change some things about what you do. However, simply bringing more awareness to the tedious things you do will boost your energy levels.

Energizing yoga poses

Lastly, some specific yoga poses are known to boost energy levels, including backbends and inversions. This week, we will focus on energy-boosting pranayama, on linking our movements to our breath to deepen the breath, on mindfulness in the moment, and on specific movements and poses that increase our energy levels.