This Yoga Flow Boosts Flexibility so You’ll Be Touching Your Toes in No Time

You may feel drawn to yoga for its stress-relieving reputation or its cool, contortionist shapes. But according to The Yoga Alliance (which is basically the Supreme Court of Vinyasa), the majority of folks seek out yoga to become more flexible human beings. Every yoga pose requires at least a little bendiness to properly perform, but if you're looking to really up your flexibility to become the limberest of them all, instructor Andrea Russell put together a flow just for you.

On this week's episode of Well+Good's YouTube series Good Moves, Russell guides you through a sequence designed specifically to unwind the tension in the creakiest, crankiest parts of your body—including your hamstrings, groin, quads, hips, and spine. For twenty luxurious minutes, all you have to to think about is breathing into whatever tightness has accumulated in your body from, you know, life.

For this particular sequence, you'll only need a yoga strap (a towel works, too!), a mat, and your body. You'll start by warming up your hammies with reclined head-to-toe pose. Then, you'll move into other yoga mainstays like lizard, goddess squat, and bridge. By the end, you'll have 10-plus new poses in your playbook that you can pull out whenever your muscles doth protest after a particularly challenging gym session or fitness class.

What's more, 20 minutes accounts for quadruple the amount of stretching you need to do in a day. Physical therapist Meghan King, DPT, previously told Well+Good that static stretching works best in 30-second servings that add up to five minutes. This sequence, however, incorporates dynamic stretching (or stretching with movement) which will get your blood circulating and your heart rate up, too. So really it's kind of a two-fer workout-recovery sesh all wrapped up in one when you stop and think about it. And yes: You'll be touching your toes faster than you can say namaste.

Here's why yoga's still sticking around after 5,000 years. And the sequence every beginner should learn by heart.