I hear a lot of excuses about why people can’t practice yoga. The number one excuse I hear is people aren’t flexible enough.

In case you hadn’t heard, yoga helps increase flexibility! How convenient.

In my experience teaching, my students are often tightest in the hamstrings, hips and shoulders.

Hamstring flexibility will help you fold over more easily as will hip flexibility. Increasing hip flexibility will also help you remove a lot of pain and soreness from sitting and release low back pain that results from a lack of support and strength in the hips. The body is all connected, so working on loosing one area of the body will help all parts of the body at the same time.

Finally, most people hold a lot of tension in the shoulders, so loosening them naturally releases stored up tension, ignored anxiety and other shoved-under-the-carpet (or shoulders) emotion. This is where the mind-body connection comes into play. Releasing tension in the muscles also helps you release tension in the mind.

It’s a win-win to increase your flexibility. You’ll find that working on physical flexibility will easily translate to other types of flexibility as well, such as mental and emotional.

Practice these three poses once a day for two weeks and you’ll see huge increases in your physical flexibility (you may even notice your whole mindset start to change)!

Don’t forget to let me know how your flexibility increases in the comments below!