Tips for Improving Your Yoga Flexibility

As you continue to practice yoga, you’ll notice that your flexibility begins to improve. You can think of your muscles as a rubber band. The more you pull these muscles the farther they will stretch. The issue is that our muscles can feel like old, rugged rubber bands that will snap if they are stretched too much. To be fair, our muscles don’t exactly work like rubber bands. Our muscles become more flexible by loosening them up and increasing the range of body motion. 

Yoga requires our bodies to be flexible in order to achieve certain poses. Roses Poses wants to help you become more flexible so you can do any yoga pose you want. 

What Is Flexibility?

Before you decide to bend your body into different poses, you first need to loosen them up. 

Flexibility is not actually determined by our muscles, but by our nervous system. Let’s use the hamstrings as an example. Let’s say your hamstrings are tight and you attempt to do a deep forward fold. As you begin to go down, your brain will send out a warning signal to your hamstrings and they will begin to contract. This is a natural survival mechanism that our body does to protect us. Our hamstrings will become less flexible but become stronger. 

Attempting to push past this can result in injury. Yoga will help your muscles become more flexible by teaching them to relax when they hit their limit rather than pulling on them to make them stronger. Relaxed muscles are loose muscles and that means more flexibility.

How To Improve Your Flexibility

It’s important to remember that flexibility does not come from pushing yourself past your limits, but rather from reaching the limit and staying there. The best way to improve your yoga flexibility is to keep practicing. These tips can help you do just that. 

• Test Your Limit: You shouldn’t force yourself past your limit, but you should still reach your limit. Play around with your limits and see how far you can stretch. This is the only way you can learn the limits of your body and reach past them. 
• Use Your Breath: When you inhale, make sure to focus on alignment and check the integrity of your posture. As you exhale, focus on letting go and sinking deeper into your current posture. 
• Remain Calm: A majority of tense muscles come from a fearful brain. The nervous system triggers muscle contractions. To combat this, keep your breathing long and smooth and remind yourself that you’re safe so your nervous system can relax. This will lead to calm and relaxed muscles. 
• Keep Holding Poses: There is a considerable amount of research that supports the idea that muscles need time to relax. Staying in a pose for five breaths is good for your muscles, but staying for five minutes and your muscles will be much more relaxed.

No matter if you practice yoga regularly or just occasionally, following these tips will make great changes in your flexibility. Don’t worry about lengthening and focus on relaxing. 

Need Help With Your Yoga Flexibility?

If you want to increase your flexibility or you want to get more involved with your yoga practice, then Roses Poses is here for you. Roses Poses is a full yoga studio found in Sierra Vista, AZ that offers a number of different classes. We want to help you realize how important yoga is for you. Visit our contact page today if you have any questions or come visit us in person and try one of our many classes.