Yoga helps you relax and bring balance to the mind, body and spirit, and it improves your flexibility, posture and muscular strength while stretching and elongating your body's muscles. This gives you a longer, leaner look. Yoga alone will not make your stomach flat. But the Mountain Tilt, Bridge Pose, Cat Pose and Locust Pose are specific asanas that strengthen your core muscles, adding tone and definition to your abdominals to help flatten your stomach.
Bridge Pose -- Sethu Bandhasa
Bridge Pose stimulates the thyroid, strengthens abdominals and lower back muscles, and expands the chest area. Lie on your back, keeping your arms to your sides and knees drawn up. Position your feet about six inches apart and move them toward your buttocks, pushing the front of your body upward starting from your tailbone and moving from vertebra to vertebra along the length of your spine until your back is arched. Push your feet into the floor, interlocking your fingers underneath you and pushing your hands into the floor to get maximum stretch in the hips and lumbar region. Move your chest toward your chin, keeping your neck and shoulders on the floor. Hold the pose for a few seconds before releasing. Lower your spine starting from the thoracic section of the spine to your tailbone.
Cat Pose -- Marjaryasana
Cat Pose is also useful in stretching and strengthening the core abdominals and back muscles -- and, as Yoga Journal says, it helps massage the spine and abdominal organs. Position yourself on all fours with your wrists in line with your shoulders and knees aligned to your hips. Gaze toward the floor and start to move your head upward so you're looking toward the ceiling while dropping your abdomen to curve your spine inward. Stretch slowly from your tailbone to your neck as you inhale. Exhale and relax, moving your spine upward, curving and rounding your back while dropping your head toward the floor and gazing toward your navel. Repeat this sequence, breathing and moving rhythmically.
Cobra Pose --- Bhujangasana
Holistic Online highlights the benefits of Cobra Prose, saying that it strengthens the back, abdominals and upper body while easing constipation and relieving gas. Lie on your stomach with your arms to your side, forehead on the floor. Place your hands next to your ribcage with fingers apart. Inhale and draw your shoulders back and begin to lift your head slowly, looking up. Raise your torso while pressing your sacrum and pelvic region into your mat, pushing your weight through your hands to the floor while straightening your arms. Curve your spine backward into an arch and continue raising your head backward, keeping your shoulders back and legs together. Hold the pose for about 30 seconds before lowering your torso to the floor, returning to your primary position.
Locust Pose --- Salabhasana
Locust Pose strengthens the abdominal muscles and is a good stress reliever. Lie on your stomach with your arms to your side and chin resting on the floor. Raise your head, upper torso, arms and legs slowly -- keeping your arms parallel to the floor -- while balancing on your abdominal and lower ribcage region. Hold the pose for about 60 seconds before lowering to the floor.
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