That niggling ache between your shoulder blades might not just be a result of poor posture but of stored tension from unresolved emotions. Try these yoga poses to release any negativity you may be holding and prepare your body to welcome happiness into your life.

We tend to hold emotions in particular parts of the body. Your chest is where you carry grief and loss. The sides of your body hold your anger and frustration. Your heart holds your love and joy.

Today yoga is mostly practised in Western society as a form of physical exercise. Yoga is invaluable in this area and regular practice provides such physiological benefits as flexibility, strength, relaxation of muscles and promotion of healthy organ function. But it can also operate on other levels. You can achieve emotional, mental and spiritual benefits by practising yoga.

It is completely up to you which benefits you choose to work towards. Your yoga practice will have an effect on all levels and you can choose to focus on the level most important to you. If you are interested in the way yoga practice can affect the emotional and mental aspects of your life, you’ll be fascinated to know that there are yoga postures you can do that will make a difference to how happy you feel. Of course any yoga practice will make you feel more relaxed, centred and calm, and a flow-on effect will usually be achieved in the area of happiness.

However, it is also possible to practise specific yoga postures that promote happiness. This is because certain areas of the body relate specifically to your feelings. Your lower back, for example, is the foundation area for your body. If your foundations feel shaky (or if you are experiencing lower back problems) then it is likely you will experience feelings such as fear, worry, insecurity or instability. Conversely, if you are going through a time in your life where you are insecure — for example, when you take out a huge mortgage or when you are facing a challenge that makes you apprehensive (the end of a relationship, a new job or the loss of a supportive friend or family member would be examples) — you may experience lower back discomfort.

We tend to hold emotions in particular parts of the body. Your chest is where you carry grief and loss. The sides of your body hold your anger and frustration. Your heart holds your love and joy. When you are having digestive problems, it may be that you are having trouble processing current issues in your life or absorbing new and challenging information. These relationships are illustrated in some of the expressions you might use to describe things you are going through.

“I just can’t stomach this,” you might say when a friend or family member does something with which you disagree. Perhaps you say “I can’t see why you would do that” when you don’t understand the actions of others. Or “My heart sank” when you hear sad or disturbing news. When you hear devastating information you might say “it knocked the wind out of me” and actually feel this sensation in the body. If you speak about something that has been bothering you, you might say you were glad to “get it off your chest”. We do describe our emotions with words that relate to our physical being.