How much flexibility and mobility can yoga give me?

I would recommend Feldenkrais. It’s not Yoga, but is designed for restoring mobility to people with all sorts of injuries or other issues due to their physical habits and so on. The exercises develop body awareness and the ability to use the body in new ways, and I imagine they would be good for developing your weightlifting itself, because it develops the way your brain relates to using your body.

@Zaku Oh interesting never head of this. I will be Googling it!

Yoga is very useful. It’s not only about flexibility and stretching, it’s also about serenity and gaining control over every muscle, including involuntary muscles (eventually). It’s also about purification, under the idea that a pure mind is a spiritual mind.

Yoga is very helpful with balance, flexibility and mobility. I think Hatha yoga is best. Try it, it also has calming and centering benefits and the breathing exercises alone are worth it.

@Zaku Have you done this yourself at all? By yourself or with a group and instructor?

@marinelife @Humane1 I haven’t considered the mind or spiritual side of it.

@LDRSHIP Yes, I’ve done Feldenkrais for several years. With a practitioner, mostly weekly Awareness Through Movement (ATM) group classes, but also some 1-on-1 Functional Integrations (FI).

It had immediate obvious effects on my energy level, funk, flexibility, and feeling like I had new body parts and ways I could move and twist. Long-term it gets me out of my chronic body habits and recurring pains/injuries (for me that’s from sitting at computers too much and repeatedly injuring my back) develops my body awareness. I feel like I have a different, much happier body than I used to, and I’m aware of all sorts of habits I had which are much reduced now and not causing chronic pains and injury, mainly the various ways I would tense and overuse my muscles. I’m much more conscious of how I move and do things, and many more options occur to me, I’m aware of my skeleton and how I can use it and tipping my mass instead of using muscles for every movement, how my body can support itself rather than me holding it, what parts are getting tired and what other parts I can use instead, I can feel the connections from a finger to the opposite toe, and where I’m holding that can cut off that connection, how I can release tons of tension just by lying on the floor and so on.

Oh, and I also now tend to stand about two inches taller than I used to.

It’s also good for generally feeling good and healing emotional blocks, which get held in the body, and released by giving it attention.

I also really like that it’s sort of the opposite (and complement) of the intentional work of an exercise program. An ATM class involves lying on the floor, relaxing, and paying attention to your body as you try to follow physical movement instructions to do various things you generally would never think to do, and your job isn’t to accomplish the movements but to pay attention to your experience of trying to tell your body to do that, and feel what goes on and explore different possible ways of doing that. It’s not work but paying attention to how things feel as you explore your options for how you can do (mostly unusual) movements, and the part of your brain that you used to learn how to do things as an infant wakes up and learns stuff just by you thinking about the instructions and trying out how it feels.