Improve Your Flexibility With Yoga

One of the key components of physical fitness is flexibility. People often pay attention to strength training and cardio to build muscles and to reduce weight but overlook flexibility until an injury or pain arises. There are also mental fitness benefits of increasing your flexibility since improved flexibility gives you the feel-good factor and releases the tension in your body. When physical tensions are released, mental tensions are also released. This also helps increase a sense of well being, alleviating insomnia, and reducing stress.

Yoga is not just about stretching, it promotes a safe form, duration, and different varieties of stretches that address the major muscle groups. Alignment of the poses in a precise way is important. Some of the benefits of flexibility are:

1. It gives you a greater range of motion
2. Less muscle tension
3. Better posture
4. Lower risk of injuries
5. Improved circulation
6. Less stress

Some of the best yoga poses for improved flexibility are

1. Parsvottanasana or Intense side stretch
   This is a forward bending stretch that stretches your spine, hips and legs. It just doesn’t stretch you body but also improves your digestion, posture, and balance.
   
   
2. Janu Sirsasana or Head to knee
   This pose helps improve the flexibility in your back, hips and thighs while increasing the blood flow in the lower abdomen. This can also be a great stress reliever
   
   
3. Bitilasana Marjaryasana or Cat-Cow
   This helps improve the core flexibility or your body. This pose is very fluid and it works really well if you want to improve the mobility and flexibility in your neck, shoulders, spine and core.
   
   
4. Dhanurasana or Bow pose
   This is an intermediate level pose. It helps in stretching all the muscles that are used while sitting and when sitting. The bow pose helps increase the flexibility in your chest, back, glutes, and legs along with your legs