There are many different yoga poses and each of them perform differently and have their own function. The one thing that they all have in common is that every pose is designed to develop a persons strength and flexibility.

Here are some of the yoga poses that are commonly used:

Standing Poses

Standing poses are quite important yoga poses as they are extremely helpful in aligning your body and your feet. Standing poses can help to improve your balance and also improve and maintain a good posture. Bad posture can cause a number of problems and you would be amazed at the percentage of people that have bad posture and don't even realise it. Yoga can help to gently stretch and straighten your back and help to improve posture and health. Standing poses also help strengthen your legs and increase flexibility and elasticity in your legs and hips.

Seated poses

Seated yoga poses are great to increase your hips and lower back flexibility. This helps to strengthen you back and help to reduce back pain and back problems. Seated poses also adds suppleness to your spine, groin, knees and ankles. One very important advantage of these poses is that they will help your breathing, allowing you to breathe deeply resulting in a calmness and feeling of peace.

Forward Bends

Forward bend poses are great for releasing tension in your neck, shoulders and back. These bends help to stretch your hamstrings and lower back helping to strengthen it. They also increase flexibility in your spine which helps to relieve that tension in your upper back, shoulders and neck.

Back Bends

Back bends will open your chest, rib cage and hips, which helps to strengthen your arms and shoulders and also increases flexibility in your shoulders. This can help to relieve any tension in the front of your body and also increases spinal ability. Taking good care of your spinal cord with these poses will help to improve and maintain good health.

Balance Poses

At first balance poses can be quite challenging as most people, without realising it, lose their balance as they get older. It isn't until you really try to balance that you realise that your balance skill have deteriorated. Balance is very important to maintain good posture and also to prevent injuries that older people often have as a result of falling over. With practise balance poses become much easier and quite fun and they really are beneficial to your health.

Conclusion

Each type of yoga pose has it's benefits for your body and health. Even though when you first start out some of the poses may seem hard, the more that you practise yoga, the more flexible your body will become and the poses will become easy and you will feel much better for it.