How to Elevate Your Yoga Practice With CBD and Essential Oils

November 23, 2020

Yoga is an ancient practice that can help promote better sleep, calmness and more. Here, we’ll show you how CBD and essential oils can elevate your yoga practice, and explain the best essential oils for yoga.

by James Han

Most people turn to CBD, yoga and essential oils for similar reasons: to find natural remedies that can help them on their quest for mind-body balance and holistic wellness.

While each can promote increased calmness, better sleep, post-workout comfort and more, incorporating all three into your daily wellness routine can help you reap their combined, amplified benefits.

In fact, CBD, yoga and essential oils are all rooted in the same ancient Ayurvedic traditions that have been used for thousands of years to improve physical and mental well-being. Here, we’ll show you the best essential oils for yoga, and teach you how to easily add them to your practice.

The Benefits of CBD and Essential Oils for Yoga

Yoga, a practice thought to have been consolidated 2,000 years ago in India, is often understood as a set of postures and meditations that can help purify the body as well as improve physical and mental strength. Though the belief in yoga’s healing properties has been passed from teacher to student for millennia, science has now verified many of yoga’s purported health benefits. It can help with the following:

regulating cortisol, the primary hormone that results in stress;
reducing inflammatory markers in the body;
supporting a positive mood; and
improving flexibility, among other upsides.

Best of all, there are many schools and types of yoga that can accommodate a range of ages, abilities and even time constraints. It’s easy to find a practice that you can weave into your daily routine, whether it’s 10, 20 or 90 minutes a day.

Incorporating essential oils into your yoga practice can enhance your experience. Depending on the ones you use — we’ll explain the best essential oils for yoga later on — you can feel greater focus and tranquility, soothe your tissues, relax your muscles and more. Things get even better when you amplify the potency of these essential oils with cannabidiol, or CBD. CBD binds to receptors in the body’s endocannabinoid system, which is in charge of helping your body find balance amid environmental stressors. Taking essential oils with CBD in conjunction with a yoga routine can help you attain optimal mind-body wellness.

Get Focused and Calm Before Your Practice

Rushing into your yoga session won’t help you reap its benefits. Instead, get in the habit of cultivating a pre-yoga routine, especially if you’re practicing from home.

About 15–20 minutes before your start time, change into comfortable workout clothes and take a dropperful of SLOW tincture, which contains essential oils such as sweet fennel, basil and orange. In particular, basil and orange essential oils have been shown to support a calm mind and i mprove mood, respectively. Be sure to hold the tincture under your tongue for two minutes to allow maximum absorption into the bloodstream.

While you’re waiting for the essential oil and CBD blend to take effect, ease your mind and body with a round of warm-up stretches and breathwork exercises. Grab a towel in case you sweat. Prepare a cup of caffeine-free, herbal tea and fill your water bottle to stay hydrated. You can even set up an aromatherapy diffuser and add a few drops of sweet fennel, basil or orange oil to soothe you from the outside in.

Relax Your Muscles After You’re Done

After you’re done with your yoga practice, it’s important to take care of your muscles and tissues to avoid as much soreness as possible. Even though yoga is thought to be less strenuous than a heavy-lifting pump at the gym, a session of moderate-level yoga still actively mobilizes your muscles and joints.

Within an hour of your practice, take one to two dropperfuls of RECOVER, an Ayurvedic tincture amplified with CBD. RECOVER contains essential oils for turmeric, black pepper and clove, all of which powerfully support your body’s natural healing process. Turmeric is rich in curcumin, which has properties that are thought to help soothe tissue. Black pepper, in turn, activates the curcumin in turmeric, and is thought to also contribute to muscle relaxation. Finally, clove is rich in flavonoids that can help maintain optimal joint health. When amplified by CBD, which may help r elax your muscles and help with soreness, these essential oils can quicken your recovery time so you can jump back into your practice seamlessly.

For a more localized or targeted way to melt the tension away, you can use a topical muscle rub like REWIND, which contains all the same potent ingredients as RECOVER (CBD from hemp, turmeric, black pepper and clove) as well as healthy fats like shea butter and cocoa butter to keep your skin smooth and hydrated. Apply REWIND after a warm shower for maximum absorption and moisturization, and let it take care of your soreness and strains.

Enhance Your Sleep

In a national study, more than 55 percent of adults surveyed reported that a regular yoga practice helped them sleep better.

In fact, there are entire yoga practices, such as yoga nidra, that are gentle and restorative enough to be done right before bed.

Yoga nidra, which means “yogic sleep” in Sanskrit, isn’t a sleeping meditation per se, but it’s now often used to help people who experience nighttime restlessness or stress to calm their minds. You can practice yoga nidra alongside a more physical and exerting asana-based yoga practice, and the best part is that yoga nidra is done lying down, often before bed. To help you settle into a more restful sleep and get the most from your yoga nidra practice, take a dropperful of STOP 15–20 minutes before bed. STOP is an Ayurvedic tincture that contains CBD as well as chamomile, valerian root and l avender essential oils that help promote more restful deep sleep and tranquility. During those 15–20 minutes, turn your phone to airplane mode, get comfortable in bed and start your yoga nidra practice until you naturally fall asleep.

Here at The Root of It All, we’re committed to offering powerful botanical remedies to help you find mind-body balance and well-being. You can learn more about the story of our brand here. For more wellness insights on Ayurveda, CBD, essential oils and more, visit our blog!

James Han is a writer, editor, and content strategist based in Los Angeles. When he’s not deep in a Google Doc, you can find him reading, rotoscoping, and taking long walks.

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