Being a wedding photographer satiates your creative soul. After all, looking at life and people through your lens gives you a fresh perspective on things - and that’s one of the exciting bits about your job. But as part of your daily hustle, you often spend the entire day lugging your heavy gear on your back, with lots of stress on your shoulders, and maybe hunched over your computer for long hours, giving final touches to the images you capture, before you get to call it a day. The result? Achy feet, sore shoulders, and a stiff back. If you find this all too relatable, here’s the good news! You can get rid of the pain and ache and keep these “professional hazards” at bay by embracing a simple fitness regime. How? Yoga for photographers is at your rescue! Sit back and relax as we take you through some yoga postures that you could include in your daily workout routine and bid goodbye to those muscle pulls and stiff joints!
WHY YOGA FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS?
As a photographer, taking a moment out of time and making it last forever is second nature to you. You get to hear so many beautiful stories and visually depict them in your own style. You meet couples, families, and friends and capture emotions in their most intimate and raw forms. Between booking clients, running your wedding photography business, and chasing tight deadlines, what often takes a hit is your health. With yoga for photographers, you can meditate, relax, stretch your body, and relieve pain. Yoga can help you get your energy back and return to work with a calm mind and a healthy body each day.
Now if you are wondering whether, as a wedding photographer, you really need yoga to rejuvenate your mind, body, and soul, then let us tell you how yoga could do wonders for your physical and mental well-being. As we already mentioned, from long wedding days, to brainstorming on marketing strategies, to client communications, to networking with vendors, back-to-back shooting during busy seasons, to everything in-between, your job as a wedding photographer can cause your body to feel tight and your muscles to feel overworked. Carrying bulky cameras and lighting equipment and squatting to get the perfect shot can make your entire body sore. So what do you do to get back to your normal self in no time? Well, practicing a few yoga postures could do the trick for you.
HOW YOGA CAN BENEFIT YOU
A broad term for an Indian spiritual discipline, the word ‘yoga’ originally means ‘union’. With its roots in ancient India, yoga is a set of physical and spiritual practices aimed at calming your mind and revitalizing your body. Out of its many branches, the one that has gained popularity in the Western world is Hatha yoga. This form of yoga primarily focuses on attaining physical fitness and releasing stress through exercises, which consist of set poses called ‘asanas’. By performing these poses, yoga practitioners are known to build flexibility and strength and also learn how to focus through breathing and mindfulness.
The best thing about getting into the groove and practicing yoga is that you do not need any experience to start, but as always, if it causes you any pain or if you have an existing injury, you can always stop and move on to another pose! With some yoga poses you can target your sore feet, wrists, neck, and shoulders and feel refreshed and ready to tackle your to-do list! And the umpteen health benefits that yoga for photographers has are great for both the mind and body.
We all know how taxing and demanding your job as a wedding photographer could get. From last-minute on-the-job panic situations to handling a bad client review, there could be a number of things that could cause you stress and worry. And it might even be difficult for you to take out time from your busy schedule and devote your energies to self-care. But wait a minute! Just think about the age-old saying, “health is wealth.” Well, if you notice how your hectic lifestyle could immensely benefit from a little bit of self-nurturing and unwinding, you’d know what we’re trying to say here. Just be mindful of the signs of burnout commonly caused due to work stress and see how you could put yoga for photographers to good use to tackle such health concerns.
Related Read: Wedding Photography Burnout: Signs, Prevention, & Recovery
MAJOR BENEFITS OF YOGA FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS
Yoga is a great form of self-care regime. Even as you practice yoga as a physical activity, its benefits on your life as a whole are huge. With a healthy mind and an energetic, active body, one has the scope to improve productivity at work as well as the quality of their personal life to a great level. To learn more about the benefits of yoga, you can read this blog from YogaJournal on 38 ways your yoga practice can improve your life. Yoga has such a tremendous healing power that it improves your overall physical and mental health. The benefits of yoga are numerous. We have listed a few here for you to better understand the effect of yoga on your body.
- Improves your flexibility
- Builds muscle strength
- Perfects your posture and protects your spine
- Prevents cartilage and joint breakdown (degenerative arthritis)
- Improves bone health
- Improves blood flow
- Lowers risk of heart attacks and depression
- Regulates blood pressure/blood sugar
- Eases pain, relaxes body tension
- Helps you sleep better
- Improves your overall physical fitness
- Helps improve focus and channel happiness
YOGA FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS: 5 POSES
1. CAT/COW
Make your way onto the floor, coming to all fours in a tabletop position. Make sure that there’s a long line from your head to your tailbone, with shoulders stacked on top of your elbows and wrists and your hips in line with your knees. (If you have sensitive knees or knee pain, you can always add a blanket underneath for more padding.) On an inhale, drop your belly low and gaze up to the ceiling. Exhale as you arch your back, taking your gaze to the floor and tuck your chin to your chest.
Benefits: Stretches the neck, spine, hips, abdomen, and back.
2. FORWARD FOLD (RAGDOLL AND SHOULDER VARIATION)
Stand up nice and tall and inhale deeply. On an exhale, fold over your legs, bending the knees as much as you need (if the hamstrings are particularly tight, bend the knees a lot here). Hang heavy over your legs, making sure there’s no tension in your neck (to release tension, shake your head “yes” and shake your head “no”). Grab opposite hands to opposite elbows. You can find stillness here or it may feel nice on the low back to add a gentle sway side-to-side. (If you’d rather take this into the shoulder variation, you can interlace your fingers behind your low back for a shoulder stretch.)
Benefits: Helps reduce fatigue, stretches the calves, hips, and hamstrings. The arm variation will stretch your shoulders and helps with headaches.
3. GORILLA POSE
From your forward fold (the last pose), slide the palms of your hands underneath your feet with the toes touching your wrist creases. Again, bend your needs as little or as much as you need to and let your head hang heavy. (Shake your head “yes” and shake your head “no”.) It might feel nice to massage your wrists with your toes.
Benefits: Stretches out sore wrists and relieves stress.
4. LEGS UP THE WALL
Lie on your back and bring your glutes as close as you can to a wall. Extend your legs up the wall, resting with the back of your legs and heels against it. Breathe deeply here and relax with your arms out at your side or resting on your belly!
If you have a foam block or a rolled-up blanket, you can place it at your low back and raise your legs up to the ceiling instead of using a wall. Stay here for at least two minutes to get the full benefits of the pose. If you don’t have enough wall space to use, you can also do this on your bed up against your headboard.
Benefits: Calms the nervous system and the mind. Relieves tired leg muscles and reduces swelling in the legs and feet.
5. EXTENDED CHILD’S POSE
To begin extended child’s pose, kneel on the floor. Keep your weight on the heels of your feet. Touch your big toes together. Separate the knees so that they are a little more than a hip’s width apart. Reach your arms ahead of you and let the chest sink towards the floor. Rest your forehead on the floor, drawing the shoulders away from the ears. Stay in this posture for as long as you need, focusing on your breath.
Benefits: This posture is calming and restorative - great for the spine, thighs, hips, shoulders, arms, and neck.
YOGA RESOURCES
To learn more yoga poses, you can consult these really great yoga resources.
- YogaTrail.com
- YogaJournal.com
- DoYogaWithMe.com
- Yoga with Adriene
- TheYogaRoom
- Yogaforphotographers by Vanessa Joy
WHAT DO PHOTOGRAPHERS NEED TO PRACTICE YOGA?
1. YOGA MAT
Vigorous yoga practices may warrant a quarter-inch-thick mat, so you don’t get bruised. In the beginning, you can use thinner ones, if you wish. It should be soft, comfortable yet a ‘sticky mat’. Sticky mats are required to get a good grip on the floor.
2. A TOWEL
Depending on your preferred style of yoga, you may end up sweating quite a bit during your practice. To avoid slipping or feeling uncomfortable, you can just use a towel and get going.
3. COMFORTABLE CLOTHING
You’ll want to wear comfortable, breathable clothes that allow you to focus on the practice and not your tugging waistband or chafing sleeve. You can wear a tank top or sweat-wicking T-shirt, a loose T-shirt, a long-sleeve shirt, or a sports bra and pair them with yoga pants, tights, capris, or shorts. Men can wear compression shorts underneath.
4. A WATER BOTTLE
We need not say much about this one. Water is the elixir of life, and any type of physical activity will make you reach out for water.
5. A YOGA TEACHER
This is the most important requirement of all to practice yoga. A good yoga teacher will help you correct your posture and oversee the alignment of your limbs while you practice yoga. You can join nearby yoga classes in the beginning, and after learning poses you think are good for you, you can start practicing them at home by yourself. If you do not have much time to attend a class or even don’t want to spend much on it in the beginning, you can just watch YouTube tutorials to get started.
6. A LITTLE TIME
You can start with as little as one hour a week and slowly increase your time each day as you start getting comfortable. If you feel enthusiastic about it, you can give half-an-hour to an hour for it each day. And if you are struggling to take out time from your hectic schedule and eke out some ‘me time’, then perhaps you should consider recalibrating how you run your business and ponder on reasons why you should not do it all by yourself. Outsourcing a part of your work to an expert could make it easy for you. Hiring an assistant, delegating your financial and operational tasks to an accountant, and automating certain parts of your workflow could help you buy back that precious time.
IT’S YOUR TURN TO TRY YOGA FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS
The next time you feel like photography has taken a toll on your body, give these simple yoga poses a try. Yoga not only helps you ease aches and pains, creating a harmonious relationship with yoga could help you get more out of life by releasing stress and making you more calm and composed. So grab your yoga mat and get to the action and try out some yoga for photographers - and tell us how a routine dose of yoga session makes you feel in the comments section below! Do you have any other go-to yoga postures, apart from the ones we discussed above? We’d love to know about those as well.
The idea behind incorporating yoga into your lifestyle is to channelize positivity and better your overall well-being. Because a positive mindset and a fit body could help you give your best at your work and make the most out of your life. To reduce your stress further, why not stop spending more than half your time in the editing room and start profiting more by doing what you love - shooting more weddings - and collaborating with a post-production expert like ShootDotEdit.
Further Read: Fitness Tips for Photographers: Wedding Photographers Edition
At ShootDotEdit, we are passionate about helping you grow as a photographer and love to provide you with photo editing services and share a part of your workload - so that you get to invest your time in a more fruitful way, doing things that you like and even devoting some time to your yoga session! Check us out today for your wedding photography culling, styling, and color-correction needs! To learn more about how we can help, take a look at our pricing plans.
Disclaimer: Please be sure to consult with your physician before starting a new exercise routine or if you have pain while exercising. ShootDotEdit is not responsible and cannot be held legally liable for any injury resulting from participating in any of the suggested yoga practices and exercises above. This post also contains links to other websites. Such external links are not investigated, monitored, or checked for accuracy, adequacy, validity, reliability, availability, or completeness by ShootDotEdit and ShootDotEdit is not responsible for the material or anything resulting from following information/suggestions within those sites.
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