Latest / Ten-Minute Mornings / Before a Busy Day: Morning Yoga for Hips & Balance
Transcript
- James @ Daily Flow: Hello friends. Thanks for downloading the audio version of today's 10 minute mornings practice. The YouTube video is linked in the show notes. And if you're staying with just the audio, don't worry about doing it right. Just move and breathe in a way that feels honest. That's enough. James: The day is looming, the email box is filling, and yet you're smart enough to know. Ten minutes of yoga will make all that go much more smoothly. Hello friends, welcome to your daily flow 10-minute mornings practice. My name is James. be sure to practice till the end. We'll pull a card, we'll set some intention together for the day, and of course be sure to like, subscribe, comment, and all the YouTube things that help us grow our community together. Let's start on our backs today. So any comfortable reclined position to begin. Firm your feet into the mat. Wrap your shoulder blades under. Heels of your palms press into the hip creases. So hip flexors is what I guess anatomically they're called. But I love that yoga yogis call it hip creases because I like that idea of a crease, especially we do so much forward folding. So that's where I'm putting my Tension and that gives me traction. I'm really pressing fairly firmly. So you feel my back opening up. Inhale. Exhale. Curl your spine up off the mat. Come into a bridge pose just for a moment. Firm the feet. Soften the glutes just a little bit. Interlace your fingers. Walk your shoulder blades together. Actually, soften your glutes as much as you can. They might still stay a little engaged, but you're trying to energize into the quads. Inhale. Exhale, lower down, one vertebrae at a time. Best you can. Cocoon your knees to your forehead and your forehead to your knees. Really round your spine. Press down in your low back. Breathe here. Inhale. Exhale. Keep the right knee with you. Extend the left foot forward and then lower that straight left leg. Interlace your fingers around the right thigh and actively pull it. Down in towards your chest. So that hip crease is getting nice and deep. And flex the right foot towards the ceiling. So it's like a kind of like a happy baby, not quite. And then keep that, keep hugging that leg. And as you extend the leg, it's gonna the thigh will get further away. But see if you can't straighten the leg. And if it doesn't go straight, that's also all right. I'm not thinking about pulling the leg toward me, I'm thinking about pulling the leg down into the mat. Inhale. Exhale, rebend that right knee, take a brief twist, look to the right, inhale, exhale. Come back to center. Set up your figure four. Step the left foot in, right ankle with the left knee. With that right hand, thread the needle. As you pull the left leg closer, right elbow presses the right inner thigh. Inhale. Exhale, let's do those things quickly on the other side. Not quickly. Let me just say quickly, briefly. Firm the feet, curl the spine up. Energize the heels. Activate the quads. Interlace your fingers. Walk your shoulder blades together. I find if I do that little bit of glute softening, I feel more of a stretch in my chest. It feels nice. Inhale. Exhale, lower down. Think one vertebra at a time. Poin knees into the forehead. Actively press your low ribs down. Feel that bit of core engagement. Inhale. Exhale. Keep the left knee with you. Extend the right foot forward. And then lower the right foot all the way down. Lower your head down. Give that right knee a nice hug, flex the, or sorry, left knee, apologies, give that left knee a nice hug, and flex the left foot up towards the ceiling as I interlace my fingers around the left thigh. My left knee at this point is still very bent, and I'm deepening that sense of that hip crease. And then I flex the left foot a little more, and naturally the thigh travels further away from me. And I'm still pulling down, trying to plug the femur into the hip socket. Inhale. Exhale, re-bend that left knee. Take a twist. Sky the left shit across. Turn your head to the left. Inhale. Thanks, Alex. Back to center, set up your figure four. Left ankle at the right knee. Left hand, thread the needle. Interlacing fingers around that right thigh. Use the left elbow, open the left hip out. Breathe into your left IT band. Inhaling. Exhaling. And then release all that. Set your feet on the floor. A little windshield wipe of your knees. And then cocoon everything in again. Rock and roll along the length of your spine. We often try to rock and roll all the way to all fours. This time we're gonna come to Malasana. So taking a few little rocks feels good on my back. Now can you print your feet? Go up into your squat. Took some momentum to do that. And if you didn't get there, it's okay. Just find your way there. Ground your heels. That matters quite a lot. Feel that firmness of the pinky edges of your feet. My elbows support my inner thighs. Inhale. Exhale, set your hands on the floor. Lift your hips and heel, toe your feet together to the center of the mat. bend your knees enough that you feel that hip grease, that you feel that connection of your abdomen to your thighs, and then let your head be nice and heavy. So it's like I'm draping my chest over my thighs. Keep that connection. That connection matters. Lift up through the kneecaps just a bit and and maintain the connection. Your legs only go as straight as they can without losing that belly to thigh justify feeling. Now just lift your chin, look forward, inhale. Exhale, think about guiding your chin closer to your shins. Rebend your knees. Roll yourself up to stand one vertebra at a time. Head and shoulders. Come up last. Tadasana. Mountain pose. Stepping your feet together. Roll your shoulder blades back. Inhale. And exhale. Shift your weight onto your right foot. Pick up your left knee, give it a hug. Instep of the right foot is the key to this balance. Internal rotation. So that right thigh is turning counterclockwise. And I'm pulling my left femur into my hip socket. Stay here if you want. Or straighten the leg and cradle just like you did on your back a second ago. Still pulling in, plugging in. Inhale. Exhale. Step that left foot back. High lunge. Wrap the shoulder blades under, energize the fingertips, biceps alongside the ears. Inhale here. Exhale, warrior too. Open up. Peaceful warrior. Open those right ribs. Extended side angle pose. I'm gonna bring my right hand to the pinky side of my right foot. Left left fingertips travel towards the top corner of my ceiling. Look up underneath that left arm. It's an open twist. Inhale. Exhale, brings the left hand down. Look forward, shift forward, warrior three. Plant in the instep of that right foot again. This is an internal rotation pose again. And then come to stand. Mountain pose. Let's do the other side. Shift your weight to your left foot. Pick up your right leg, give your right knee a hug. This is a great place to stay and just work on this balance. And that image, that sensation of that internal rotation of the left thigh. So you're not just focused on the ball of the foot. You're thinking the whole leg is coming into the midline. That helps me at least with balance a lot. So does having a soft point of focus. And then maybe straighten the leg and cradle the thigh, pulling it back. Drop your shoulders, flex that foot. And if yours isn't as high up as mine, or if it's higher than mine, which it very well might be, that's fine. That matters less. It's a good stretch in the hamstring. Inhale. And then re-bend that right knee, step it way back. High lunge. Whoop. Wrap your shoulder blades under. Ball me onto that right foot is nice and active. Just a little bend in the right knee. Look up, inhaling. Exhale, warrior two. Open yourself out. Left heel bisects the arch of the right foot. Fingertips energized. Peaceful warrior as you inhale. Extended side angle pose. Left arm forward and eventually down. Right fingertips traveling up. You can have the left elbow on the left thigh if you'd like. Look up underneath your right arm, inhale. Exhale, bring the right hand down, and then just look forward. I'm finding that internal rotation already, shifting my weight to the instep. The left thigh is turning in clockwise. Warrior three. Stand mountain pose. We don't really have time. We're gonna do it one more time. A little flowy here. Shift your weight to your right foot. Pick up your left knee. You can either hug the thigh or left piece, fingers, left big toe. You're still plugging the femur into the hip socket. You might straighten the leg. Inhale. Exhale. Control, step it back, high lunge. Inhale here. Exhale warrior two. Inhale, peaceful warrior. Either extended side angle pose or you can take half moon pose. Inhale here. Can you turn whatever you just did into warrior three? So you're releasing the twist. If you're on one foot, you're staying on one foot. If you're on two feet, you're coming to one foot. Then rise all the way up to stand. Mountain pose. Feel the left foot. Bring the right foot up. I'm bringing my right piece fingers to my right big toe. You can hold the thigh. Straighten the leg, plug the thigh bone into the hip socket. Inhale, exhale, sev it back. Inhale, high lunge. Exhale, warrior two. Inhale, peaceful warrior. Either extended side angle pose or half moon pose. Breathe here. Now turn this into Warrior 3 from wherever you are. So the you're gonna have to square your hips from either shape. Find that nice internal rotation. And then stand up. Mountain pole. You can lie down, have a brief shavasana. You can sit. Or whatever. I'll just grab a card real quick. I see sometimes those tarot readers on YouTube. They shuffle so smoothly and so well. I'm not good at that. Alright, they have more practice. We had this last week. Fuel. The pose is chair pose. Utkatasana. Fuel. Your body and mind are product of how you care for them, care for them. Garbage in, garbage out. You are what you eat. You are what you take in. Last week I reflected a little bit about taking in or not taking in food that is. Cruel, or at least as little as possible. What are you fueling your mind with? What is the media that you're taking in? People want us to click on things that make us mad. People want us to get into the comments and get into arguments and tear each other down and tell each other how what we think, what that person thinks is wrong and what we think is right. How is that fueling you? And how is that fueling the person with whom you are engaging? I gave it up a long time ago. Nobody ever changed somebody's mind in the comments. It's just a chance to prove how right they are. And when you stop engaging, you somehow, I find, I shouldn't say you, when I stopped engaging, I stopped getting quite so many of those kinds of posts. The algorithm learned. That was wasted on me. Now, do I still see things that make me mad? Do I still get upset about the state of whomever or whatever? Of course, I'm a human being. And I still see some of that stuff. But I stay out of the comments and I also balance it by taking in positive things. There's a line between being aware, knowing what's happening in the world enough to be a citizen of it, and just going down that spiral. I'll tell the story very briefly. One of my friends told me this weekend about. having just sort of had YouTube on in the background and having seen a video that kind of interested him and he was doing some other work, but it automatically played the next thing. And he said it went from something that was science into something gradually that became kind of Pseudoscience into full-blown conspiracy theory. And he said, I understand, I get it, that if you just leave these things on, it's gonna go to the next thing until you say stop. Until he said, Wait a minute, this isn't landing, this isn't right. And he stopped that message. He stopped fueling himself with that. First of all, it gives you some compassion for the people who do get those messages. The people who do go down those wormholes, rabbit holes, whatever kind of holes they are. That doesn't sound good. But it gives you maybe a little bit of compassion for them because they're not hearing the things that you're hearing because their vision is clouded. So today, the fuel you receive, the fuel you offer. May it be fuel worthy of you. The light that is in me bows to and honors that light that is in you. Namaste. Thank you so much, as always, for this time. As you probably have heard if you've been here, first episode of my podcast, Hello Friends. with James Donegan is out. It's on every plot podcast platform. I think it's a really nice half hour brief conversation with a neat lady named Monique Rhodes. She's a happiness strategist. And my next episode will be out in two weeks. I'm doing them every two weeks with a musician, colleague, friend, Maddie Pow. so I commend those things to you. And let me know if you have any ideas for episodes, if there's stuff you'd like to hear about, talk about people that interest you, people whose mindfulness practice has guided their lives in unexpected ways. Thank you so much for this time. Have a wonderful day. Namaste. James @ Daily Flow: a follow or review goes a long way. And of course, you're always welcome to practice live with me on YouTube, 8 a.m. weekdays.