are you looking to increase your flexibility well you’re in luck because today we have the author of yoga Lhasa fee for inner strength Mandi Ingmar who’s going to show us four steps to help us get into the split let’s do this okay we’re going to start off in cobblers pose – step one – opening up the inner thighs so you’re just going to go ahead and ring the soles of the feet together take a deep breath in and as you’re ready just exhale and fold forward so I want you to hold each of these moves for 30 seconds this is the the beginners version that’s right and we’re gonna do frog pose so let’s go ahead and come up onto the knees and as you’re just going to stay right there in that position and I want you at home to stay there until you’re ready to build up to this so we’re going to go ahead and bring the hands forward and open the knees out to the sides feet flexed and we’re just going to go ahead and slowly slowly slowly lower down good if you feel any stress on your knees at all I want you to go back to cobblers pose so you can come down onto your forearms and so this is beautiful over here but I also want to note that if you shift your weight forward into your forearms it’s a little easier so you want to go ahead and use the leverage of your arms to push your hips back you should feel that pretty deeply yeah your inner thighs okay so each of these poses you hold for 30 seconds we’re going to go ahead and come out of this nice and easy bring your hands right below your shoulders and we’re just going to push down in order to lift the hips up great so that’s awesome for opening up your inner thighs I like that the next thing we’re going to do is we’re going to go into a lunge so you want to make sure that your your heel is directly below your knee and you’re just going to hold here good and just come into this to stretch out the hip flexor so breathe into this good the second step is to go ahead and to let your foot flex and open the knee out to the side and then bring your forearms down to the mat this is lizard pose right so you can hold this for 30 seconds and you can also go deeper into a pigeon pose so you just walk your foot forward so that your knees directly below your shoulder your ankle is directly below your other shoulder and then you’re going to come down so these each of these stretches opens up the hips in a different way so my preference would be for you to do each of them good okay so after you’ve done that for 30 seconds you’re just going to come out of this just by pushing down to lift your hips up and we’re just going to go into a pyramid pose so now we’re going to stretch out the hamstrings the hamstrings are also really important to stretch out before you work your way into a split so you want your feet about hip width apart your back heel is angled in slightly and you’re just going to actually extend your sternum down towards the top of the foot and when you do that arch your back a little bit you should probably feel this in the hamstring pretty deeply – yes nice yeah okay good so this is step one you can remain right here and just allow your head to drop down so that you’re relaxed good and then the second step is we’re just going to drop the left knee to the floor and go ahead and extend the right leg good flex out through the heel you can either come down into this hamstring stretch or stand pyramid pose and when you’re ready you can start to just slide your front foot forward and you just want to stop wherever you feel your edge right whenever you’re looking to find your edge but not go past it and just breathe into it and then eventually over time after you’ve practiced this a lot you’re going to be able to bring yourself into a full split okay so my suggestion is that you try these poses 30 seconds each for 30 days and check in on where you are at the end of that time and you’ll find that you have a lot more flexibility okay so we’re just to get out of this we’re just going to rock our weight onto the onto the right hand and swing the left foot forward and I just want to finish you guys with a hamstring stretch just to balance out the legs so again you’ll at home you’ll want to do what we just did on the other side so go ahead and move the fleshy part of the butt off to the side some days more fleshy than others let’s take a deep breath in reach up lengthen the spine always lengthening before you fold exhale go ahead and you can do like a peace sign with your fingers and hook onto your big toes yeah and then shift the heart forward chest towards the tops of the feet and breathe breathe into your hamstrings good so it’s really important to remember that you know if flexibility is you know a lot about the way that you’re built so a lot of yoga instructors are naturally flexible with loose tendons and ligaments so you know you might not be as flexible as the person next to you but you might be like a better kisser so you know let them be able to do this blitz you stick with what you got okay let’s go ahead and come out of this thanks you guys yeah I’m gonna practice good it’s so good I’m gonna practice kissing me too Video source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJNkX46OgtQ
