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I've Been Doing Yoga 3-4x A Week For The Past Year—Here's What I've Noticed

Author: Sarah Regan

April 28, 2026

mbg Spirituality & Relationships Editor

By Sarah Regan

mbg Spirituality & Relationships Editor

Sarah Regan is a Spirituality & Relationships Editor, and a registered yoga instructor. She received her bachelor's in broadcasting and mass communication from SUNY Oswego, and lives in Buffalo, New York.

Image by Javier Pardina / Stocksy

April 28, 2026

Yoga, like any good habit or routine, takes consistency in order to reap the benefits. I've been practicing yoga for years, but it was only in the past year that I've been consistently practicing three to four times a week.

I have my yoga teaching schedule to thank for that, which gets me into the studio to teach hourlong Vinyasa classes on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. I do the poses with the students as I teach, and on a good week, I'll take at least one class as a student myself.

And after a whole year of consistent practice, I can honestly say I've never felt stronger or more grounded in my body. Here are the benefits I've felt firsthand, plus my go-to yoga poses for improved mobility, strength, and posture:

1.Increased shoulder mobility

So many people suffer from rounded shoulders, tight pecs, stiff necks, and upper back pain. I did too, with frequent tightness on my right shoulder that would run up into my neck, sometimes causing tension headaches!

But over the past year, I've been practicing plenty of neck and shoulder stretches, including simple neck-release stretches, thread-the-needle, and shoulder rotations.

Not only do I rarely get that stiff shoulder pain anymore, but my upper back and neck are less rounded, and when I open my arms out to the side, I can feel that my chest is way more open and loose as well.

2.Better core strength

I always start my yoga classes with a few staple core exercises to get the abdominal muscles warmed up and activated.

It's no secret that good core strength helps improve posture by way of supporting your upper body and taking pressure off the low back, and I've felt those benefits firsthand this past year. I've especially seen benefit with functional core moves that work the deep, low abdominals that can be hard to reach (i.e., planks and hollow holds instead of just situps).

Not only has strengthening my core helped support my overall posture, but I just feel stronger and more confident when I carry myself.

3.Open hips

As my core got stronger this past year, I noticed it helped me stand up a bit straighter, but that made me realize my hip flexors were tight. To support the newfound openness and strength on the front side of my upper body, I had to address the lower half of my body too.

This led me to (pretty intensely) focus on opening my hips and stretching out my hip flexors. For a few months, I was hellbent on stretching the fronts of my thighs and counteracting the effects of sitting—and I did!

Where my hips were once constantly stuck in flexion (upper body leaning slightly forward at the hips), I can now stand tall with my hips forward, joints stacked, and my weight fully supported.

4.Increased foot mobility

This one might sound silly, but you'd be amazed how many problems can start down at your feet and run up the body, causing ankle pain, knee pain, hip pain, low back pain, and yes, even shoulder pain.

Our joints are designed to stack and support our weight, but if our weight isn't evenly distributed through our feet, we don't have the proper foundation set.

For me, this looked like pronating heavily on my right foot (placing more weight on the inside of the foot), which caused the whole right side of my body to be out of alignment. Now that I think about it...that could've been contributing to the aforementioned shoulder pain on my right side—but I am certain it contributed to knee pain.

So now, I always do foot mobility drills before balancing postures, fanning out my toes and stretching my feet and ensuring I'm distributing my weight evenly.

If your big toes point inward from wearing shoes all the time, let me tell you—mine did too. But I've been doing these foot exercises so often that they are literally changing the shape of my feet. My big toes point less and less inward, and it's improved my stride, plus reduced pain.

5.Better posture

I touched on this benefit already, but I'll say it again: Consistent practice over the past year has helped improve my posture in so many ways.

With my chest more open and shoulders relaxed back, I can sit up straight without difficulty or much effort, and the increased core strength helps with that too.

Going back to the idea of stacked and supported joints, I finally know what it really means to stand tall, and all of my yoga postures just feel more right.

6.Reduced pain

A majority of my aches and pains have historically been on the right side of my body. As I mentioned, my right knee and right shoulder