Yoga improves strength, balance and flexibility. When done regularly, it also calms and relaxes the body and mind.
When building a sequence of yoga poses, focus on a specific area of the body you want to work on. For example, aim for four hip-opening postures and four shoulder-stretching poses in a session.
Downward Facing Dog
Downward dog (also known as Adho Mukha Svanasana) is a strengthening and energizing yoga pose. It stretches and strengthens multiple muscles groups including the arms, shoulders, wrists, and back. It also helps with posture and increases blood flow to the brain.
This pose is often used as a transition between moves or as part of the sun salutations. It’s important to practice this move with proper form and to slowly progress into it.
You can come into the downward dog from a resting Child’s Pose by sitting your butt back onto your heels and stretching your arms forward. You can also come into it from Plank Pose by moving into downward dog and then lowering your knees down to the floor. This is an excellent stretch for the lower back and hamstrings.
Mountain Pose
Mountain Pose is a foundational standing pose that symbolizes the strength, stability and calm of a mountain. It serves as a base for all other yoga postures, encouraging alignment and balance.
It promotes body awareness by challenging students to align their entire bodies from the toes through the crown of the head. This helps to develop balance and core strength and reduces injury risk in more advanced poses.
Mountain pose strengthens the legs, particularly the knees and ankles, but also tones the calf muscles, outer thighs, and shins. Practicing the pose for long periods of time can help strengthen the knees and improve balance. It can also help a student learn to notice when they are pronating or supinating their feet. This information can be used to correct their imbalances in other yoga poses.
Extended Side Angle
Utthita Parsvakonasana or Extended Side Angle pose strengthens the legs, opens the hips and stretches the spine and lengthens the sides of the body. It also challenges balance. It stimulates the abdominal muscles soothing and improving digestion. This is a great yoga posture for beginners and intermediates as it builds strength while preparing the student for more challenging poses.
It also helps to relieve backaches and is good for sciatica, menstrual discomfort, constipation, lower backache, arthritis, asthma, indigestion and depression. It is used as a preparatory pose for a variety of standing poses such as Warrior II and Reverse Warrior. It can be done with a block or with the forearm on the thigh for beginners. To do this, you should align the left knee directly above the ankle and make sure that the front foot is parallel with the front edge of the mat.
Lunge
Lunges are a great way to strengthen the hip, knee and ankle joints while improving balance and core stability. They also help to address asymmetries in strength between the legs and can be used as a substitute for running when you are recovering from injury.
To make lunges more challenging, add a weight to your back leg as you lower down into the position, or try doing them on an unstable surface such as a box or step, which increases the intensity and challenges your balance. You can also experiment with variations like the curtsy lunge, which places more emphasis on the gluteus medius and hip adductors by moving into a crossed leg position mid-air and then pushing off to return to a standing upright position.
Twist
Twists help regain balance in the body after backbends and forward bends. They work on the obliques and muscles supporting spine movements as well as the shoulders, pelvis and neck. The twisting effect on the abdomen presses and massages the organs, boosting blood circulation, releasing toxins and infusing the digestive tract with fresh oxygenated blood.
Despite their power, twisting poses should be approached with caution if you suffer from herniated discs or spinal fusion, are pregnant or have any other health condition. In order to avoid injury, the key is to focus on lengthening the spine first.
This elongation allows each vertebra to rotate more freely without the risk of constriction in the lower back. Beginner-friendly twisting postures include the easy spinal twist, half lord of the fishes pose and twisted prayer pose.