Essential Yoga Poses for Beginners - Yoga Asanas
When you’re just starting to try yoga, you may be tempted to leap right into the most visually impressive postures and try to impress your friends with scorpion pose or wounded peacock pose. However, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re only going to hurt yourself.
There are yoga poses for beginners for a reason – you need to build up strength, flexibility, and balance while learning the fundamentals of the practice. Once you have mastered these beginner yoga poses, you can slowly work your way up to the more advanced ones.
In this post, we will go through some of the best yoga poses for beginners. We’re going to take a slightly different tack here. Instead of focusing on how to perform each pose, we will go through pointers for each to ensure that you are getting it right.
Our advice is to sign up for a class so that you can learn the perfect technique from the start. If classes are not an option, we’d recommend looking for a good DVD or online video instead. It’s difficult to make sure that you are getting the pose right just by looking at pictures online.
Choose a class or video that offers a comprehensive beginner yoga sequence made up of some basic yoga poses.
Types of Poses
Standing Yoga Poses
These poses require the most work, and so you are bound to find them the hardest. Most classes will start with some standing yoga poses for beginners to help you limber up. Depending on the style that you are learning, you might do several long sequences in a row.
Balancing Poses
Balance is one of the most important aspects if you want to build core strength. You’ll need to have a strong core to perform some of the more challenging poses. Again, these are difficult initially but become much easier with practice.
Backbends
These are more challenging and might feel uncomfortable. There is also a possibility of hurting yourself if you don’t get the form right and are not warmed up for the backbends. Having an instructor is highly recommended here – you can learn without risking injury.
Seated Poses
These are stretches that you’ll perform from a seated position. This is normally done once you’ve warmed up well or towards the end of the session. If you find any of them uncomfortable, trying folding a towel into quarters or using a block. Place these under your neck, lower back, or other locations to help improve your comfort.
Supine or Resting Poses
Resting postures don’t get all the press that the more popular ones, like Downward Facing Dog, do, but they’re important yoga poses for beginners. These postures can be used to help relax the muscles. If you feel you need a break, these will allow you to continue passively stretching your muscles.
Beginner Yoga Poses
As you try each of these poses, go slow and listen to your body. You should feel a pleasant stretch but stop immediately if you feel pain.
Mountain Pose
Another standing posture, this is another essential one to learn. Here the proper alignment is crucial. You should imagine a string holding your body in a straight line. This should extend from the top of your head to your heels. You’ll need to tuck in the pelvis and check your shoulders. Focus on keeping the weight on your heels and make sure that your shoulders are relaxed and not rounded.
Warrior I
There is only one main tip to remember with this standing posture: you must keep your hips facing forward. Line up the hips so that they are parallel to the front of the mat. You might need to place your feet wider apart to make this happen.
Warrior II
This standing posture is completely different from the previous one. In this case, you are going to point your hips to the side. You’ll usually move from Warrior I into this one. You’ll need to keep your shoulders and hips limber and open to your side.
You’ll have to rotate your rear foot so that your toes are out at a 45-degree angle. With both poses, bend at the knee and ensure that your thigh is parallel to the floor.\
Extended Side Angle
To keep your shoulders open here, you can place your forearm against the thigh instead of putting your hand on the floor. Getting this correct is essential, or you won’t be able to keep your torso in the right position.
Triangle Pose
This is a slightly more difficult yoga pose for beginners. If you’re not able to touch the floor, put a yoga block there and aim for that instead. You can safely rest your hand against your leg as long as you don’t put it on your knee. If you’re finding that it is still difficult, you can bend slightly at the knees to help ease the pressure on the hamstrings.
Cat-Cow Stretch
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This is the first of the backbend poses that we’ll be dealing with. You’ll get to stretch and then flex the spine. This helps to improve mobility and keep the spinal column properly aligned. If you battle with back pain, this is a good pose to learn.
Staff Pose
This seated pose is similar in function to the mountain pose. If you’re finding the standing poses too difficult, this makes a good alternative. If you find that you can’t sit directly on the floor, fold your towel into quarters and sit on that. Normally this posture will be followed by a forward bend.
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