We can tell you this: Do yoga regularly and you will improve your flexibility. No one is going to call you out and if they do, find another class. The best yoga poses for flexibility are those that are done regularly. Hamstrings, hips, and shoulders tend to top the list so the following poses address those areas. Each pose is described individually but they are sequenced so you can also join them together to make a flow.
There are numerous ways to adapt this pose, most notably by using a strap around the instep of the lifted leg. Keeping your leg as straight as possible is the best way to stretch your groins, hips, hamstrings, calves. Instructions 1. Begin by lying on your back with your knees bent and the soles of both feet flat on the floor. Hug your right knee in towards your chest. Either take a yogi toe grip around the big toe or fit a strap around your instep.
Extend your right leg straight up toward the ceiling. If you can, extend your left leg along the floor. Activate both feet point or flex.
A hand on your left thigh can help remind you to keep that hip flat down on the mat. Make sure to keep both the right femur thigh bone and the right humerus upper arm bone settled in their sockets. After five to ten breaths, repeat with the left leg. This pose offers a wonderful way to stretch the hip flexors gently at first and then more deeply as flexibility becomes more available. If you are looking for more intensity, you can substitute in Pigeon.
Lie on your back with your knees bent and the soles of your feet on the floor. Place your right ankle on the top of your left thigh, opening your right knee to the right. Stay here or lift your left foot off the floor and start to bring your left thigh towards your chest. Reach your right hand through the gap between your legs to clasp your hands around the back of your left thigh or around the front of the left shin. Draw your left knee closer to your chest which will cause your right knee to move away from your chest while making sure that your sacrum stays anchored to the floor.
You can also use your right elbow to nudge your right knee further away from your chest. Keep both feet active throughout. After five to ten breaths, switch legs. This pose is good for everything, particularly stretching the hamstrings and calves along the backs of the legs. Come to your hands and knees with the knees slightly behind your hips.
Curl your toes under and lift your knees from the floor. Lift your seat to the ceiling by straightening your legs. Pedal your feet one at a time. Settle into relative stillness for a least five breaths while pushing strongly into the palms of your hands and maintaining the inverted V shape of the posture.
Consider this a choose your own adventure type of pose. You can lunge deeply into the front hip or keep it more over the knee. Reaching the arms toward the ceiling also stretches the muscles between the ribs intercostals.
You can try reaching around for your back foot to add a quad stretch if you like. Pick a variation that works for you. From Downward Facing Dog, step your right foot forward to the inside of your right hand.
Lower your left knee to the mat. Inhale to lift your arms overhead. Reach for the ceiling while simultaneously moving your shoulders down away from your ears.
For a deeper hip stretch, take your right knee forward a little or a lot. If you want a quad stretch, lift your left heel toward your left glute. Reach your right arm behind your back to catch hold of your left foot or ankle.
Draw your foot toward your butt. In addition, connective tissue is responsible for your body awareness. Supple and hydrated fascia give you a sense of spaciousness and connectedness to your body as the nerves in the fascia can optimally communicate with your brain. The practice of yoga and stretching muscles certainly contribute to body awareness and overall good health. But you can also enjoy these benefits without being able to put your legs behind your head.
Although that usually gets a chuckle or two, students rarely back off and continue to try to pull themselves deeper into the pose, to stretch beyond where they are. In my experience, flexible people are in general more at risk of injuring themselves than stiff people when practising yoga. Many bendy students have a tendency to bypass a core stability and integrity in their body, When stretching in a yoga pose, the strain is not isolated, but pulls on a whole system of connective tissue, which leaves them vulnerable to overstretching of the weaker parts.
This can lead to nasty and sometimes chronic situations, which I have seen a few of in my years of teaching. Yoga practitioners striving for more and more flexibility increase their risk of tendon, ligament and joint overstretching, with many consequences. Micro tears in the muscles are normal with exercise and heal quickly. Muscles have good blood flow which allows regenerating cells to work efficiently and fast.
These micro muscle tears are different from tendon tears, which are quite common in yoga because of overstretching. This type of tear takes a lot longer to heal up to a year is not uncommon.
Overstretching ligaments takes the damage one step further and in some cases can lead to chronically unstable joints. Too much pulling on the joints when stretching is probably the riskiest kind of overdoing it and the one that has the longest lasting effect on the body. This is quite common and often caused by extreme forward bending or hip flexion poses, such as Uttanasana standing forward bends or Paschimottanasana Seated Forward Fold variations or asymmetrical hamstring stretches such as Utthita Hasta Padangustasana Extended Standing Hand to Big Toe pose.
An example of ligament over-stretching is overstretching the legs in poses that put the sacroiliac SI joint between the two sides of the sacrum at the back of the pelvis or the lower back under too much pressure. The SI joint can then dislocate and cause a host of problems in both the legs and the spine, such as radiating pain in the pelvic area or sciatic nerve pain.
Many teachers have only limited knowledge about the potential dangers of stretching and so may encourage students to move deeper into a pose than what may be healthy for them. Having stiff muscles, or more accurately less flexible fascia, constricts your mobility and at the same time protects your joints and ligaments from overexertion.
The stability of your body protects you against injuries like the ones I described above. You may never do a full split, but you will probably never destabilize your sacroiliac joint either. So the next time you are encouraged to stretch yourself beyond your limit, stop for a moment and consider what you are trying to achieve. While it may seem otherwise, it is not my intention to scare you away from yoga with this article. The benefits of practising largely outweigh the risks associated with the practice.
We can get so fixated on getting somewhere, becoming something, that we bypass ourselves and unconsciously put our health at risk. We tend to forget that the most valuable part of our yoga practice is simply listening to our bodies.
There is just your body. And that body is perfect for yoga. Listen: pay attention and relax. Try to feel your body before going into active stretching. Do you notice any compression in parts of your body? Are your joints open or locked?
Do parts of your body feel vulnerable or sensitive? Are you holding your breath and tension in your body? The better you listen to your body, the better you learn to stretch.
Align : feel and root down through your bones and skeleton. Another delicious pose that will increase your flexibility when practiced often is Intense Side Stretch. It will increase the flexibility in your shoulders , chest, hips and hamstrings. Many beginners can reap the benefits simply by hingeing at the hips and extending the chest forward, parallel to the mat and over the extended foot, rather than down.
Hold for five breaths and switch sides. Image credit: Brittany Danielle. Get ready to change everything with this free day program. Over 1 million others have joined.
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