Yoga is a meditative pursuit 5000-year-old practice. It is a for strength, mobility, flexibility, and overall wellness. You might feel like you’re doing a lot of work while not moving too much doing yoga. Well, you’re right. All that balancing requires strength and focus which raises your body’s core temperature, getting the blood flowing to make you more alert. And any time you feel yourself shaking during a pose, it’s a good thing. All the tiny connective tissue in your body is trembling like a hummingbird’s wing, giving your nervous system a massage. When you’re done, you’ll feel like 1 million bucks. It’s the perfect exercise to do in the morning to gain clarity and intention for your day.
First Thing Is First
You should drink a tall glass of cold water right when you wake up. This jump starts your metabolism and allows you to do your yoga poses before eating breakfast. You won’t get hungry on a stomach full of water.
Sun Salutations
Performing sun salutations as your first pose in the morning allows your body to wake up, becoming mobile, and it serves as a great warm-up for the other poses. Sun salutations are a series of flow movements designed for the very outset of a yoga session and, according to the name, was created for the morning time. You are literally saluting the rising sun.
Child’s Pose
Child’s pose is complete serenity. It is a calm way to center the mind for proceeding to more difficult yoga poses. It also does a great job of stretching out your back and shoulders.
The Cat and Cow Pose
Your brain sends electrical signals down the nerves of your spinal cord, where they branch out to each of the muscle fibers of your body. In fact, your brain’s primary function is to make your body move. The more your body moves, and specifically the more your spine moves, the more clearly you can think during the day. The Cat/Cow pose directly addresses spinal mobility.
Triangle Pose
Most of the movements thus far have been on the sagittal plane, meaning that the movement is directly forward and backward. The triangle pose gets you out of the sagittal plane by forcing you to twist your thoracic spine. It not only loosens your spine, it works your hamstrings, calves, glutes and your neck mobility to complete your morning yoga routine.
Overall Wellness
It’s not talked about much, but having a clean living environment can be an integral part of your yoga practice. A clean environment is conducive to a healthy environment, and wellness is what yoga is all about. Since you spend so much time on the floor doing yoga, it is imperative to keep the floors of your home clean in order to promote your wellness; the wellness that you work so hard on every morning during your yoga routine. Consider carpet cleaning for a clean environment to ensure that your home is clean and healthy. Total wellness is obtained by living healthy every day, eating real foods, exercise, and what works for your body.
Fuel For The Day
Now that your yoga routine is over, you are likely to be hungry. Your stomach is now metabolized a glass of water you drink before you began your yoga routine and the demands of your morning stretch have put you into a calorie deficit for the day. This is where you make a decision as to whether or not the healthy for the entire day. Fortunately, your mind is now clear after a good set of yoga poses.
Reach for lean protein like egg whites, good carbohydrate like steel cut oats, and quality fats like avocado. And, just like your clean floors, always make sure to use hygienic food storage sets to promote a clean, healthy environment. It is difficult to keep healthy food fresh, but with the right food storage system, you can keep it fresh and clean for the best start to your day. Yoga in the morning allows you to make sound decisions the whole day through.
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Thanks for the sun pose chart. I will bookmark and use. I so agree about starting with a glass of water. Since my tummy just can’t take cold water first thing in the morning, I keep a kettle ready to turn on first thing. A hot cup of water is soothing and thirst quenching and does get me going. I appreciate, too, how you tied our immediate environment into the whole of your/our practice. I find the state of my house often reflects the state of my mind!
Hi Kathryn Grace,
Glad the sun pose chart is useful for you. I am also not good at drinking cold water in the morning – by noon I am drinking ice water but before than ice water just don’t appeal at all to me. I certainly agree with about the our state of mind reflecting the state of our house – if my house is in disarray my mind is also clutter and unhappy. Thanks for stopping by and commenting. Have a healthy, happy, safe, & blessed Labor Day weekend!