"Standing tall" means you're feeling confident, brave and in good posture. Although yoga cannot literally add inches to your height, a regular practice can help you stand tall, in optimal alignment with your feet firmly on the floor, toned muscles, a strong core, an elongated spine, more flexible shoulders and your head held high.
Posture Problems
According to the website, GrowingTallerGuide, some common posture problems affect your height. These include a tilted pelvis from weakened stomach muscles that pull your pelvis forward; knock knees and bow legs that cause you to walk with too much pressure either on the inner or outer parts of your feet; and rounded shoulders that bring your head forward and down. All of these can detract from your natural height.
Yoga Benefits
A regular practice of yoga poses, called asanas, can help correct these typical posture problems. Yoga can balance, relax and align your body and mind, lubricate your joints and ligaments for better movement, strengthen your spine, tone abdominal muscles, improve mood, build confidence and increase stamina.
Study with a professional yoga teacher and let him or her know if you have any health issues or injuries before class.
Optimal Alignment
The most basic yoga posture, tadasana, or mountain pose, grounds you firmly to the earth and, at the same time, lifts you toward the sky. Your optimal alignment in tadasana applies to all other asanas and will help you feel and look taller.
Stand with your feet hip-width apart and your arms by your sides. To offset bow legs or knock knees, balance your weight on all the four corners of your feet -- big toe mound, inner heel, little toe mound and outer heel.
Align your pelvis by bending slightly forward to widen your seat. Then, as you stand upright, pull in your belly, lower your tailbone and extend the rest of your spine upward. To reverse slouched shoulders, draw them back and downward as you lengthen your neck upward and slightly back.
Forward Bends
Standing forward bend, or uttanasana, stretches your leg muscles, lengthens your spine and strengthens your knees. Bending and stretching forward creates space between each vertebrae to benefit nerves and circulation and help you stand tall.
Downward-facing dog, or adho mukha svanasana, requires a firm foundation from feet and hands as you lengthen and strengthen the muscles and joints along your arms, through your back and from your pelvis down to your feet. Because downward-facing dog is weight-bearing, it also strengthens bone density, another factor that helps maintain height.
Back Bends
A back bend expands the front of your body as it stretches and strengthens your spine, shoulders, arms and abdominal muscles; opens chest, heart and lungs; firms buttocks; and relieves stress and fatigue, all of which help you stand tall. Two good poses to practice include cobra pose, or bhujangasana, and bridge pose, or setu bandha sarvangasana.
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