Do you ever think that yoga is too difficult? Or that it’s not for you? Here you will find my favorite yoga stretch routine for flexibility. These will help increase your flexibility and range of motion, so give them a try!
You know that feeling you get after a workout? That sense of calm and accomplishment, knowing that your body is better because of all the hard work you put in? Flexibility is no exception. Yoga stretches are one way to achieve this desired state of being, but they’re not always easy to come up with on your own.
Yoga and Flexibility
We’ve got some simple yoga poses for beginners here to help you start achieving those long-held dreams of more limber hips or reaching higher than before.
We all know that yoga is great for flexibility, but if you’re not sure what to do or where to start, this blog post and video will teach you some easy stretches. One of the best stretches is the cobra pose. What it does is help to lengthen and strengthen your spine.
To get into position:
- Lie on your belly with palms flat on the mat under your shoulders and forehead resting on your hands or clasped behind your head.
- Now push up through the palms of your hands, lifting chest off the floor as high as possible (you should feel a gentle stretching sensation in back).
- Next, slowly release down to starting position so that you’re lying flat again with arms outstretched along side body and face touching mat while breathing deeply.
Yoga Stretch Routine for Flexibility
Do you feel tight and sore after a long day of work? Are your muscles stiff, and do you have tense shoulders or back pain? Do you want to relieve some of the tension in your body, but don’t know how to move properly because there are so many different poses in yoga? You need a routine that is going to make it easier for you. This video is going to teach you what poses to do for more flexibility with each muscle group!
5-Minute Yoga Stretch Routine for Flexibility Video
Are you looking to increase your flexibility? Working your way to the splits, often regarded as the ultimate feat of flexibility, takes time. Regularly follow this yoga sequence, led by Mandy Ingber, to loosen tight hamstrings and open up inflexible hips and you will be well on your way to mastering the pose. The splits may be all about flexibility, but you don’t get there without strength — so be sure to check out Mandy’s new book Yogalosophy For Inner Strength, which explores the relationship between opening up the body and healing the mind, heart, and spirit.
Okay, we’re going to start off in cobblers, pose step one opening up the inner thighs, so you’re just going to go ahead and ring the soles of the feet together, take a deep breath in and as you’re ready, just exhale and fold forward. So I want you to hold each of these moves for 30 seconds. This is the the beginners version.
That’s right and we’re gonna do frog pose, so let’s go ahead and come up onto the knees and as you’re just going to stay right there in that position, and I want you at home to stay there until you’re ready to build up to this.
So we’re going to go ahead and bring the hands forward and open the knees out to the sides, feet flexed and we’re just going to go ahead and slowly slowly, slowly lower down good. If you feel any stress on your knees at all, I want you to go back to cobblers pose, so you can come down onto your forearms, and so this is beautiful over here. But I also want to note that if you shift your weight forward into your forearms, it’s a little easier, so you want to go ahead and use the leverage of your arms to push your hips back.
You should feel that pretty deeply yeah, your inner thighs okay, so each of these poses you hold for 30 seconds, we’re going to go ahead and come out of this nice and easy, bring your hands right below your shoulders and we’re just going to push down in Order to lift the hips up great, so that’s awesome for opening up your inner thighs. I like that. The next thing we’re going to do is we’re going to go into a lunge, so you want to make sure that your your heel is directly below your knee and you’re just going to hold here good and just come into this to stretch out the hip flexor.
So breathe into this good. The second step is to go ahead and to let your foot flex and open the knee out to the side and then bring your forearms down to the mat. This is lizard pose right, so you can hold this for 30 seconds and you can also go deeper into a pigeon pose. So you just walk your foot forward so that your knees directly below your shoulder, your ankle, is directly below your other shoulder and then you’re going to come down. So these each of these stretches opens up the hips in a different way, so my preference would be for you to do each of them good, okay, so after you’ve done that for 30 seconds, you’re just going to come out of this just by pushing down to Lift your hips up and we’re just going to go into a pyramid pose so now we’re going to stretch out the hamstrings.
The hamstrings are also really important to stretch out before you work your way into a split, so you want your feet about hip width apart. Your back heel is angled in slightly and you’re just going to actually extend your sternum down towards the top of the foot, and when you do that arch your back a little bit, you should probably feel this in the hamstring pretty deeply. Yes, nice, yeah, okay, good!
So this is step one. You can remain right here and just allow your head to drop down so that you’re relaxed good and then the second step is we’re just going to drop the left knee to the floor and go ahead and extend the right leg. Good flex out through the heel, you can either come down into this hamstring stretch or stand pyramid pose and when you’re ready, you can start to just slide your front foot forward and you just want to stop wherever you feel your edge right whenever you’re looking to find your edge, but not go past it and just breathe into it and then eventually, over time after you’ve practiced this a lot you’re going to be able to bring yourself into a full split okay.
So my suggestion is that you try these poses 30 seconds each for 30 days and check in on where you are at the end of that time and you’ll find that you have a lot more flexibility. Okay, so we’re just to get out of this.
We’re just going to rock our weight onto the right hand and swing the left foot forward, and I just want to finish you guys with a hamstring stretch just to balance out the legs so again, you at home you’ll want to do what we just did on the other side so go ahead and move the fleshy part of the butt off to the side, some days more fleshy than others.
Read More: 4 Powerful Reasons Yoga is Ideal for All Ages
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