Yoga Stretches Will Tone Your Muscles

Advanced age can stiffen our limbs and make it difficult for us to move around especially during cold weather. If you are one of those people who frequently suffer from stiff and painful limbs during cold weather, do not hit the bed and curl up in misery.

Yoga Stretching Exercises

The basic purpose of yoga stretches is to help keep the muscles from shortening. This is important because as muscles shorten, compensations begin occurring throughout the structural body resulting in a loss of mobility and flexibility.

Yoga is a very safe exercise. It is non-competitive and does not require you to test your strength and endurance abruptly. Note that yoga stretching exercises are done slowly and gently, so even if you are already advanced in years and your bones and muscles are no longer as flexible as they used to be, you are not really in direct danger of hurting yourself when doing yoga stretches.

In fact, if you do yoga stretched regularly, you will be able to rebuild your lost muscles and feel stronger. A lot of elderly people who are into yoga, reported that they feel a renewed sense of vigor after doing yoga exercise for sometime. 

Mountain Pose

This is another of the most popular yoga stretching exercises, because it offers so many benefits and for almost the entire body. You want to begin by standing with your feet hips width apart and then lift your toes up. Now you want to lengthen your tailbone so that your posture is correct, and relax your shoulders down. Lengthen up through the top of your head and take five to ten deep breaths, then relax and repeat.  

Look for a good class schedule. If you feel quite stiff when you wake up in the morning, you should not force yourself to go to a yoga training class early in the morning. A yoga class sometime during the middle of the day or late in the afternoon will be better for you. Once you find the right yoga class, you should talk to the instructor and tell him or her about your physical problems. Talking to the instructor is very important so that the instructor can design a beneficial yoga routine that will suit your needs.   

It will take time before you can regain some of your muscle and joint flexibility. Depending on your age and your lifestyle it may take a few weeks to loosen up those joints and muscles. However, the good news is that once you have considerably strengthened your joints and muscles, it will be easier for you to move around and do whatever you want to do.