International Yoga Day 2024: Stress Busting Exercises To Do In Traffic

It's International Yoga Day, a day that is truly dedicated to celebrating our peace of mind, our fitness and our well-being. But how does one do that when you're stuck in massive traffic? Because we all know driving in traffic is stressful and I have a few tips and tricks that can help relieve some stress.

But the most important thing is, your car should be stationary before you do this. So ideally of course, park your car on the side of the road for a couple of minutes and let us show you how it's done.

Okay, so first up, let's start with some deep breathing exercises. Now for this, most importantly, make sure you're sitting comfortably in your seat. Make sure that the seatbelt isn't too close to your neck.

Let’s begin with a deep breathing exercise. So first up, just take a long inhale, maybe for a few seconds, pause and then exhale. You have to, of course, do this for a few rounds to really feel the effects of this. Make sure, of course, you do five to seven rounds and the exhale should be a few seconds longer than the inhale. This was definitely the easiest exercise and you must do it every time you're feeling stressed.

Next up, alternate nostril breathing exercises. All of us are Indians, so we're very familiar with this one. All you have to do, of course, is place your finger on one nostril, breathe in from the other, pause and exhale from the other nostril. So start with your right hand and breathe in through your left nostril.

So now that we're feeling calmer, let's move that attention to the body, which definitely feels stiff and sore sitting in traffic for so long. So let’s begin with your arms. Stretch your arm out, pull the wrist back towards your body and hold it here for a few seconds.

Once you’re done with the downward stretching, raise your hand upwards and pull it back again. And then repeat the same thing with your other arm.

Now that we've got that all happening, let's move to our shoulders. This is probably a part that also gets stiff for you. So, do some shoulder rotations.

All you have to do, and we've done this in school, we’re sure all of us during our PT classes did simple shoulder rotations. So a couple of rounds clockwise and a couple of rounds anticlockwise.