Yoga offers many health benefits, from better breathing to more flexible muscles and joints. But those aren’t the only changes you can expect from doing yoga. You may want to know what else can happen, such as changing your height.
Yoga cannot change someone’s skeletal height. After a person stops growing in puberty, they won’t get any taller. However, yoga can help with one’s posture, making it easier to stand taller. So while the skeleton won’t change, practicing yoga may make it look like that.
If you want to practice yoga, you should consider how it can affect your physical being. You may not grow to be as tall as a model, but you can stand up straighter and feel better. Keep reading to learn how yoga can affect your posture and appearance.
Physical Changes From Yoga
Yoga can change your body in multiple ways. After all, it is a form of exercise, so you can see similar changes to running or lifting weights. But some of the physical changes from yoga can help you stand a bit taller.
You can’t change your height without adding heeled shoes. However, improving your overall strength and working on your posture may add a little extra height, especially if you tend to slouch.
Here are a few of the physical changes from yoga that can help you look taller.
Muscle Strength
Doing yoga will help strengthen almost all of your muscles. Of course, you need to alternate between poses that will target different muscles in your body. But a good yoga routine will hit on all muscle groups, from your head to your toes.
Strengthening some of your muscles, like in your arms, won’t affect your height at all. But you can strengthen your abdominal muscles (your core), and that can keep you from slouching. Working on your shoulder muscles can also keep you sitting and standing up straight.
If you practice yoga, you should focus on your entire body. That way, you can increase muscles that can make you look taller, but you can feel better overall. Sometimes, confidence can make you have a greater presence in a room, even if you’re short.
Increase Human Growth Hormone
Practicing yoga can also increase your body’s production of human growth hormone. After puberty, this hormone won’t make you grow taller. However, it can increase your bone density and muscle mass.
More muscle mass means you’ll be stronger, and that can include the core muscles that help with your stance. You can support yourself better, and you may not be as tempted to hunch over when you’re feeling tired or lazy.
Having more bone density can indirectly affect your height. If your bones aren’t very dense, they can break easily. And as you age, you can develop problems, like osteoarthritis, that can make you shorter. But by maintaining bone density, you can offset that and perhaps look a little taller.
As you do yoga, you can also increase your ability to exercise. That means you can continue doing yoga each day to work on your physical fitness. So you don’t have to worry about losing any hard work you do when you start yoga.
Better Posture
Yoga can also help you improve your posture. Many people sit for long periods, and a lot of workers use computers or mobile devices for many hours a day. All of that sitting and looking down can take a toll on your posture.
It means that when you’re standing and talking to a friend, you might slouch subconsciously. Your body is so used to shrinking or leaning over, and it can be hard to correct that habit. But when you practice yoga, you have to have a good posture for the poses.
You don’t need to look down at a screen, and you can look straight ahead or up, depending on the pose. The tree pose is one example that can help your posture. You have to stand on one leg and raise your arms above your head.
Other poses can help you relax your body, so you can get rid of any tension that keeps you from having a good posture. After you make yoga part of your routine, you may find you start to sit and stand a bit taller.
Body Awareness
As you improve your posture with yoga, you can also gain more body awareness. It sounds simple, but sometimes being aware of your shoulders and back can help you stand taller. If you just go about your day, it can be easy to forget about those things.
When you don’t think about how you sit or stand, you may revert to bad habits. You could easily stop engaging your core muscles, and your shoulders could move forward and down. Your neck may also change and keep you from sitting up straight.
During and outside of yoga, try to check up on your body. When you’re doing a pose, make sure you aren’t overextending yourself too much. And when you’re working or doing chores, check your body once or twice an hour and remind yourself to have good posture.
How to Get These Changes
The physical changes that can affect your posture are great, but doing yoga doesn’t guarantee you will see those changes in yourself. You need to consider how you practice yoga and the poses you focus on so that you can target your posture and height.
Even if you’re new to yoga, you can enjoy these physical benefits. Here are a few things you can do to make sure your yoga practice will help you reach your physical goals.
Choose the Right Exercises
If increasing your height is your main reason for doing yoga, focus on that. You should do different poses and exercises, but you don’t have to spend a ton of time on ones that won’t help. Instead, fill your routine with poses that engage your back and shoulders.
Work on your balance, and choose poses that can help your core muscles get stronger. That way, you can use those muscles outside of yoga to make yourself look or feel taller.
If you don’t have a ton of time to do yoga, choosing the right poses is essential. You can get right to the exercises that you know will help you reach your goals. And once you see progress, that can keep you motivated to do yoga.
Use Proper Form
No matter what exercises you do, you should always use proper form. When you start yoga, focus on body awareness and learning poses correctly so that you don’t have to relearn them later. As you learn more poses, practice them slowly and repeatedly until you know how to do them.
Consider taking yoga classes to learn the correct form and have someone available to correct you early on. A teacher can review your position and help you change what isn’t quite right.
Using the proper form will help you enjoy the benefits of yoga. It can keep you from hurting yourself, and you won’t have to take a break from yoga. Having good form will also help reinforce good posture in other areas of your life.
Practice Regularly
You should also practice yoga regularly to keep up with it. That way, you don’t lose the muscle strength you build, and you can keep working on your posture. If you go too long without doing yoga, you may find you revert to old habits.
You don’t have to do yoga every day, but you should make it part of your weekly schedule. Even doing it once or twice a week can be often enough to help you maintain good posture.
Final Thoughts
Yoga won’t make you taller, but it can remind you of how to achieve good posture. Improving your body awareness and strengthening your muscles can help you maintain that posture for long periods. Then, you can look and feel taller without changing your skeletal height.
Sources
- Healthline: Can You Increase Your Height By Practicing Yoga?
- Mayo Clinic: Human growth hormone (HGH): Does it slow aging?
- Verywell Fit: How to Do Tree Pose (Vrksasana) in Yoga
- The Oklahoman: The link between yoga and height increase
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