5 Best Beginner-Friendly Yoga Exercises and Poses

Do you want to embark on your yoga practice but wondering how? These beginner-friendly yoga poses will set you on your yoga journey and how!

Yoga helps you get stronger, more flexible, and more balanced. It also helps you relax and feel less stressed, in part due to its emphasis on focused breathing.

Research has shown that yogic practices can help reduce stress, anxiety, depression, and chronic pain. They can also help you sleep better and improve your overall health and quality of life.

Beginner-Friendly Yoga Exercises and Poses

Check out these five beginner-friendly yoga exercises and poses.

1. Mountain Pose (Tadasana)

The mountain pose looks easy, but it isn't. It is the mother of all yoga poses. This two-footed stance is the starting point for many other stances that require balance and awareness. This pose helps you find the right shape and alignment for other movements.

Here's how you can do this beginner-friendly yoga exercise:

• Stand with your feet together; your arms hanging straight at your sides.
• Make sure to press all four corners of your feet into the ground.
• Next, straighten your legs and tuck your tailbone in as you tighten the muscles in your thighs.
• As you breathe in, make your torso longer and stretch your arms up and out.
• Exhale and move your shoulder blades away from your head and toward the back of your waist as you bring your arms back to your sides.

2. Cat-Cow Pose

The cat-cow pose helps ease back pain because it stretches and wakes up the spine. It also opens up the spine, neck, chest, and shoulders and makes them more flexible. The pose is a great way to warm up your back and get ready for the downward-facing dog pose. It also helps with mobility (hello, desk jobs) and works your core without putting as much pressure on your wrists and shoulders as a downward dog.

Here's how you can do this exercise:

• Get down on all fours on your mat, with your hands right under your shoulders and your knees right under your hips.
• Spread your fingers wide and divide your weight evenly between your hands.
• Inhale and round your back by arching it up as you lower your chin to your chest.
• Feel the stretch from your neck to your tailbone, like a cat.
• As you let your breath out, bend your back all the way down until it looks like a scoop.
• At the same time, lift your head and tilt it back.

3. Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward Facing Dog)

The downward-facing dog calms the nervous system, improves overall flexibility, decompresses the spine, tones the arms, shapes the legs, and opens the shoulders. Your body is in the shape of an upside-down V. It's a good beginner-friendly yoga exercise.

Here's how you can do it:

• Start by putting both hands, palms down, on the mat in front of you, just in front of your shoulders.
• Put your knees right under your hips on the ground.
• Breathe out as you lift your knees off the floor and lift your buttocks and hips toward the ceiling.
• Push the top of your thighs back and reach your heels down toward the floor.
• Keep your head down and in line with your upper arms. Don't let it hang down.
• If you notice that your lower back is rounding, you can straighten your back by bending your knees.

4. Virabhadrasana I (Warrior Pose I)

This pose is the first in the warrior series. It makes your legs stronger, opens your hips and chest, and stretches your arms and legs. You'll get better at focusing and keeping your balance as you do this exercise, which is both very important in a yoga practice.

Here's how you can do it:

• Start in the mountain pose to learn how to do it.
• As you let out your breath, step your left foot back about 4 feet.
• This puts you in a lunge position with your right ankle over your right knee.
• Raise your arms straight up, biceps near your ears, and turn your left foot about 90 degrees to face the left wall.
• Put your left heel in the same place as your right heel.
• Pull your shoulders backward and open up your chest.
• Lower your body toward the floor as you lift your arms up.
• As you continue to breathe, make sure your hips stay square to the front.

5. Baby Pigeon Pose

Runners like this pose because it makes the hips more flexible and relaxes the glutes and lower back. You must do this stretch if you run, lift weights, do CrossFit, or Spin. It will help you stay strong, flexible, and improve your performance.

Here's how you can do this beginner-friendly yoga exercise:

• Move your right knee forward between your hands when you are on all fours.
• Slowly straighten your left leg behind you, as if you were doing a lunge, keeping the knee and top of the foot on the floor.
• Now, turn your right knee toward your right wrist and bring it down to the floor so that your right calf is flat on the floor and your right foot is resting under your left groin.
• Lower your upper body over the bent leg, either all the way to the floor or so that it rests on your elbows.
• Take five slow breaths in and out. Before you switch sides, push back on your left leg to stretch the calf muscles.
• Repeat with your right leg straight and your left leg bent.

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Takeaway

These five beginner-friendly yoga exercises are easy to learn and perform. They are a firm foundation on which you can build more complex poses and variations.