Yoga for Prostate Health

If you have a solid exercise routine but neglect to stretch before or after your workout, you can benefit from adding yoga to your warmup or cooldown.

Yoga can help you make the most of your workout and also help alleviate some of the symptoms that contribute to prostate cancer, including stress and inactivity. And considering about 1 in 8 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime, yoga is a fairly low-impact way to fight back.

The benefits of yoga

Yoga’s benefits easily translate to daily life. It can make you more mindful, reduce stress and allow you to be more productive at work. It can also elevate your mood, making each day easier, and possibly help improve your interpersonal relationships.

If you spend a lot of time sitting and staring at a computer while you work, your posture may be less than ideal. Depending on the poses you practice, yoga can strengthen your core, back and shoulder muscles, which can improve your posture and solve problems with back pain and sore joints.

Yoga and deep-breathing exercises before bed are a great way to calm your mind and body, allowing you to fall asleep quickly and stay that way.

The benefits of yoga for prostate health

The prostate is a gland that sits below the bladder, surrounds the urethra and produces part of the liquid that makes up semen. When healthy, it should be about the size of a walnut. As men age, their prostate may become enlarged and cause problems with urination, sex drive and sexual performance.

Through a combination of stretching, endurance- and strength-building poses, and stress relief, yoga may improve sexual performance, as well as the quality of your erections and orgasms. And since stress is such a big factor in the development of prostate cancer, yoga’s stress-relieving elements can help reduce men's chances of getting prostate cancer.

Yoga poses for prostate health

If you struggle with prostate problems or worry about developing prostate cancer, first see a doctor to determine the most appropriate treatment for you. As a supplement to treatment, try to incorporate three poses into your workout a few times each week: cobbler, crescent lunge and frog.

Cobbler pose

An easy yoga pose for beginners is the cobbler pose. Sit on a mat or a cushion with your legs straight in front of you. Move your knees out to the side and bring your feet toward you until their soles touch. Use your hands to keep your feet together as you try to keep your knees as close to the floor as you can.

This pose allows you to stretch your hip muscles and improve circulation to this region while relieving pelvic tension. As a bonus, strengthening the pelvic floor can help alleviate the symptoms of an enlarged prostate.

Crescent lunge

Get into a lunge position where one leg is positioned forward with knee bent and foot flat on the ground while the other leg is positioned behind with knee bent and touching the floor. Straighten your back leg by lifting your knee off the floor. Push your back heel toward the wall behind you and elongate your spine as your hips move forward. Take deep breaths and stretch your arms above you. Hold this pose for one minute and repeat it on the other side.

Done correctly, the crescent lunge improves mobility in your hips and stretches the muscles in your groin. Tight hips can contribute to lower back pain, knee strain and other injuries, so incorporating this pose into your warmup can help remedy these problems.

Frog pose

For this intermediate-level yoga pose, start on a yoga mat on your hands and knees. With your hands on the mat under your shoulders, move your knees out to the side to stretch your inner thighs and groin. Open your hips as you turn your feet outward and lower yourself down onto your forearms. Hold this position and practice deep-breathing techniques.

The frog pose opens up and stretches your hips and groin while strengthening pelvic muscles and improving circulation. This pose is most effective for treating an enlarged prostate when paired with Kegel exercises.

Now that you have an idea of what some yoga positions can do for your prostate health, give a few of them a try. From lower stress levels to better sex, a healthier life, body and prostate await you.