If you are a beginner in yoga practices, you may find the seated poses the simplest. People who thrive on self-alignment can benefit from the constant yoga practice.
You can’t ignore the importance of cross-legged yoga poses as they help you get an energetic body at its best. Each of the postures is unique and serves specific benefits. The best side of including these yoga poses in your daily session is flexibility!
You can either involve them at the beginning of yoga practice to loosen your body or reconsider them at the end of the practice session after successful heat generation in the body.
Let’s take an insight into this guide to obtain detailed knowledge about the 8 Advanced Cross-Legged Yoga Moves with their benefits.
Easy pose or Sukhasana
It seems pretty straightforward, but sitting in this cross-legged position for a prolonged time is challenging. Sit with a straight spine and tuck the feet under reverse legs.
If you are used to sitting comfortably for a long while in this position, you can alter the leg-crossing halfway. If you find difficulty posing, you can place any blanket or block under your thighs to support and safeguard the knees from undesirable pressure.
Benefits – This is one of the easiest and best poses that can effectively help you unfold your hip areas. This pose is the ultimate solution to minimize the muscle tension due to walking or driving.
Free up your breathing, bring energy to the body, and allow your spine to arrive in its natural curves – Sukhasana is a powerful yoga pose that can prevent laziness and improve your postures.
Cow face pose or Gomukhasana
While doing Gomukhasana, people feel uncomfortable as this pose makes way into those areas of the body that are difficult for stretching. Individuals with loose hips can easily balance out the position of knees and thighs to make it attainable.
All you have to do is sit on a blanket, bring your knees and thighs close by resting one on another and connect your both hands at the backside. If you can’t join your hands, take a strap to continue connecting towards the centerline.
Benefits – Don’t ever try to do this pose without the guidance of a yoga instructor who has certified from a Yoga School.
If you practice this super beneficial pose incorrectly, you can be racked with knee pain. There’s no better substitute for the cow face pose for improving legs mobility and stretching back muscles along with upper arms.
Butterfly pose or Baddha konasana
If you are heading toward practicing an advanced level of cross-legged yoga poses, you must consider the Butterfly pose as the prerequisite one. For getting utmost comfort in doing this pose, keep a backing-like prop or pleated blanket beneath your thighs to keep your knees lifted.
Also named Bound angle pose, this cross-legged yoga position effectively stretches out the inner thighs. Sit by widening your knees, and press the edges of both feet together to ease out your thigh area. When you feel discomfort doing this pose, stop at the particular point.
Benefit: If you have tight hips from doing high-intensity workouts or sitting for extended hours, you may get enough help from practicing the butterfly pose.
Increasing flexibility, loosening up the inner thigh, opening up the buttocks, and improving the reproductive system may achieve strength in your lower body muscles and joints due to holding this position for an extended period.
Full lotus pose or Padmasana
For many Yoga practitioners, achieving the full lotus pose is an important goal. People who feel uneasy opening up their hips should restrain from putting pressure on their knees.
Whenever you are approaching this suggestive yoga pose, make sure to receive advice from an experienced yoga teacher who has undergone 200 hours of Yoga Teacher Training to safeguard your body balance.
Tuck in your legs as close to your opposite cradles to get into the full lotus pose. Beginners may try out the half lotus pose first for finding the pose flexible.
Benefit: Settling into the full lotus pose helps you explore hip joint movement, stretch out knees and ankles, regain energy level, succeed in good posture, make your ligaments flexible, and ease out childbirth pain. Altering crossing legs every time may help you in excelling in this powerful pose.
Fire log Pose or Agnistambhasana
The fire log pose resembles stacking fire logs one on another. It would help if you piled your ankles on alternate knees reciprocally to perform the pose.
As fire symbolizes purification, practicing this pose facilitates body cleansing. Without having highly flexible hips, this pose looks pretty challenging to achieve. Place both calves parallelly, one above the other, and make sure the knees and ankles touch each other.
Benefit: Regular practicing fire log pose can stretch out piriformis muscles, improve blood flow, stimulate sexual health, alleviate lower back pain, stimulate a healthy digestive system, deliver toned muscles, and lift the creativity level at its best.
Half lord-of-the-fishes pose or Ardha Matsyendrasana.
This deeply twisted yoga pose leads to strengthening the thigh and outer hips. If you are interested in the heavy-weighted twisting pose, thrive for attempting this one.
It would help if you sat in dandasana, placed your left foot on the floor, and bent the right foot adjacent to the right thigh.
Performing this seated pose can eliminate waste material from your body and prevent any negative thoughts from coming up in your mind.
Benefit: Similar to any other cross-legged yoga pose, this twisting yoga pose can effectively eradicate fatal diseases, restore body balances, strengthen metabolism, stretch out the spine and hips, give relief from sciatica pain, give the body maximum energy, and makes your mind calm.
Half Lotus Pose or Ardha padmasana
This yoga pose is an alteration of conventional mediation practices. This is one of the hip-opening postures that enhance flexibility and brings inner peace to live life fully.
Before heading to practice half lotus pose, know your limits. Otherwise, you may get sudden injuries in the knees or ankles. Cross your legs close to your hip, relax, and watch your breathing.
Benefit: With regular practicing of the half lotus pose, you can bend your legs quickly, get relief from menstrual pain, straighten your spine, get ultimate relaxation, mediate rightly, strengthen your inner thighs, and achieve flexibility in gluteal muscles.
Hero Pose or Virasana
Virasana is a yoga pose where you are expected to sit like a hero. For yielding satisfactory results:
- Try to practice this powerful yoga pose in the morning.
- Seat in a kneeling position and widen the gap between your feet.
- Opt for bringing down your hips to sit on your butts. If you feel a jerk in your knees, stop progressing this asana.
Benefit: To successfully perform this yoga pose, you need to have flexible muscles in your thigh, hip, and ankles.
Regularly performing this yoga pose can help you out from swelling legs, relieve exhausted legs, bring mental stability, make feet stronger, cure high blood pressure, boost endurance level, improve blood circulation in the lower body part, and relieve gastric problems.
Are you ready to practice cross-legged yoga poses?
Looking at the fantastic physiological benefits of cross-legged yoga poses, try to incorporate some of them into your regular yoga session.
Don’t sit in any of the poses mentioned above for an extended period to prevent extreme body soreness. Always practice under the guidance of a certified yoga trainer to avoid any medical emergency and be gifted with optimum health.
