Supercharge Your Yoga Practice: 20 Superposes That Carry Maximum Benefit with Minimum Risk

The term superfood is usually used to describe nutrient-rich food that is especially beneficial for our health and well-being. Certain yoga poses can be described as “superposes” because they also carry incredible “nutritional value” for our bodies.

What makes a pose a superpose? Surprisingly, it is not the difficulty or intricacy of body part arrangement, and not even the strength or uber-stretchiness that one needs to exhibit to do them. In fact, most superposes are quite simple. What makes them powerful is their incredible diversity. The purpose of any yoga pose is to carry maximum benefit for your individual body with minimum risk.

A superpose is a pose that:

1. Can deliver the benefits for many different body parts at the same time (“benefit-dense”).

2. Is accessible to most students.

3. Can be modified easily to emphasize the effect for a particular area.

4. Can be adapted easily to accommodate different body shapes, physical abilities, student preferences, and so on.

Below is a list of poses that I consider to be “superposes” because they are benefit-dense, accessible to most students and offer multiple options. They are arranged in five groups of four and represent a gradual progression from most foundational toward more challenging. If you choose to build your yoga practice on those instead of chasing after the fancy exotic ones, you will end up having a rich, satisfying and “nutrient-dense” yoga practice.

More helpful yoga basics from Olga Kabel – 7 Ways to Troubleshoot Your Balance Poses.

Study core strength and so much more with Olga Kabel and YogaUOnline – Yoga for Posture Improvement with Focus on Core Strengthening and Axial Extension.

Reprinted with permission from Sequence Wiz.

Educated as a school teacher, Olga Kabel has been teaching yoga for over 14 years. She completed multiple Yoga Teacher Training Programs but discovered the strongest connection to the Krishnamacharya/ T.K.V. Desikachar lineage. She had studied with Gary Kraftsow and American Viniyoga Institute (2004-2006) and received her Viniyoga Teacher diploma in July 2006 becoming an AVI-certified Yoga Therapist in April 2011. Olga is a founder and managing director of Sequence Wiz- a web-based yoga sequence builder that assists yoga teachers and yoga therapists in creating and organizing yoga practices. It also features simple, informational articles on how to sequence yoga practices for maximum effectiveness. Olga strongly believes in the healing power of this ancient discipline on every level: physical, psychological, and spiritual. She strives to make yoga practices accessible to students of any age, physical ability and medical history specializing in helping her students relieve muscle aches and pains, manage stress and anxiety, and develop mental focus.