How To Do Floor Leg Raises In Hatha Yoga Video

Strengthen your leg muscles with Hatha floor leg raises. Learn how to do floor leg raises in Hatha yoga with this video about yoga poses and positions.

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Lie on back
Extend leg to sky
Bend knee to chest
Inhale & lift opposite leg to sky
Exhale & slowly lower leg down

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Cindy Mastry has practiced yoga since the age of eight, and also has a background in Jazz and Ballet. Active in the fitness industry for nearly twenty years, she teaches aerobics, kickboxing, and yoga at many fitness centers in the Tampa Bay area. Cindy trained with 84 year-old Master Yogi Monk, Baba Hari Dass at the Mt. Madonna Center in California and owns/operates "Yoga Etc Studio" in St. Petersburg, Florida. Cindy teaches yoga to people of all ages and experience levels and at very competitive rates.

CINDY MASTRY: Namaste. In this floor leg raise, you will find you realign your spine, realign the sacrum and lengthen through the psoas. So we are going to come laying on our backs and we are going to extend one leg up to the sky. And then you are going to bend your knee in to your chest. Just holding on to that knee, hugging it in. Now, you are going to flex through both feet and press the leg that is long on the floor. Press that thigh right down. Inhale and lengthen through the crown of the head. And as you exhale, press through the bottom of your foot, lifting it up just a little bit, maybe three inches off the ground. Inhale; lift the leg very slowly up to the sky. So the full extent of the inhale happens as the leg reaches its highest point. Then as you exhale, drawing your belly button in and slowly lowering the leg down. The full extent of the exhale happening when the heel comes down just to about three inches off the ground. Now, instead of going right back up, you are going to inhale. But as you inhale, you lengthen the crown of the head forward. And on the exhale, you think about sending your hip, your heel through the other side of the room, almost like you are pulling that femur bone right out of your hip socket and you feel the length in here. Then inhaling, reaching the leg up and then slowly exhaling. Again, taking time to take that extra inhale just to feel the length, the inhale reach through the crown of the head. And then as you exhale, press through the bottom of the foot and feel that femur bone, feel like it is pulling right out of the hip socket. So that is one way to realign your sacrum, the iliopsoas. And if you do it on only one side, you are going to feel like this leg is about a mile longer than this leg.

How to Do Floor Leg Raises in Hatha Yoga Video

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