Yoga is a practice that incorporates a set of postures called asanas to exercise your body and calm your mind. There are different styles of yoga that will help you improve the overall health of your legs, increasing their blood circulation and stimulating their muscles. Consult your physical therapist before incorporating yoga into your daily exercise routine if you are recovering from a trauma and need specific exercises to strengthen your leg muscles. Restorative yoga classes may be recommended if you had any type of bone fracture because you will be able to work gently on rehabilitating your leg at your own pace.
Flexibility
Postures such as extended side angle pose and head-to-knee pose improve the flexibility of your hamstrings as you open your legs and reach your forehead toward your knees. Holding these postures for extended periods of time is particularly beneficial because you can allow your body to go deeper into the posture, assisted by your breath. With each exhale, you consciously release any tension holding you back and sink into the posture. Yoga rooms that are kept warm allow your muscles and tendons to become more flexible, and you will in turn be able to go deeper into your postures. However, be cautious not to overdo it and hurt yourself.
Strength and Tone
Holding power poses such as warrior one pose for more than two minutes will provide your legs with enough resistance to begin building muscle and tone your legs. To build your strength, you can perform strengthening yoga postures in 30-second increments, to prevent hurting your muscles by overexerting them.
Weight Loss
Some yoga postures work your cardiovascular system and raise your heart rate, which assists your body in losing weight. Postures that can help with weight loss in your legs include leg rotation pose, which is similar to scissors done on the floor in aerobic classes.
Relief
Poses such as legs-up-the-wall pose bring relief to your tired legs. In this posture and other similar ones, such as headstand, you put your legs up against the wall so that all of the blood rushes down to your upper body. As you do this, you assist your body in the release of your spine and groin, and you take all of the stress away from your legs. The relief is many times enough to help reduce leg cramps and always helps with relieving stress from your legs caused by simple walking throughout your daily activities.
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