Latest / Ten-Minute Mornings / 10-Minute Balance Practice: Stay Steady When You Wobble
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. 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. It only takes 10 minutes to wake up, move, breathe and ground in what is stable. So you're free to wobble through whatever life presents. Hello friends. Good morning. Welcome to this daily flow 10 minute mornings practice. My name is James. Come to stand at the top of your mat. We're gonna start with some nice easy sun salutations today. Feel grounded down in the feet and then float your arms overhead. Don't try to find a back bend yet. Instead, just focus on getting long. Energize the fingertips, press down through the feet. Maybe shake your head yes and no, inhale. And then fold forward, sweep your arms really wide if you have the space. Really lengthen and bow. Find a flat back. Step back to a plank. Posing here for an inhale. Exhale, lower your knees, your chest and your chin. Cobra pose, press the belly down, pull the heart forward as you wrap your shoulder blades under, tuck the toes, downward facing dog. Inhale, exhale, feel the length of your spine, feel the heart drawing back to the thighs. I just had a nice little crack in my back. It's waking up here. And then go ahead and walk your feet forward to your hands. Really feel each footprint one at a time. And then find your flat back, maybe hands to shins and fold. Breast down through the feet. Take those arms wide again. Feel your legs and your feet grounding you so you can float those arms. And then bring your hands to heart center. Let's just do that again. Just waking up everything. Inhale, float the arms. Again, focus more on length, but maybe lift the chest a little bit, look up a little bit. Maybe you bring palms to touch. Then fold forward. Exhale. Inhale, long spine. Exhale, step back to your plank. Inhale, pause. Exhale, knees, chest and chin. Cobra pose. And downward dog. Maybe you pedal out the heels a little bit. Maybe you start to feel your legs activate. It's okay if your heels don't touch the floor. That's okay if they do, but don't feel like you have to really stretch your hamstrings. Just allow them to be a little tight if they're tight so that they can open up at their own pace. You get sometimes a decent amount of injury in yoga because we're forcing a stretch that's not quite ready for it yet. and then walk your feet forward to your hands. Inhale, long spine. Exhale, bow. Root down, rise up. When you hyperextend that hamstring, it is a condition called yoga butt. And it sounds cute, but it doesn't feel good. It's just a little inflammation at the insertion point for the hamstring. All right, let's move on a little bit. And now, float the arms. Fold forward. And then pause here, find your flat back, but start to shift your weight a little more to the right foot. Pick up the left heel and then I'm going to set my fingertips on the mat. You might use blocks or even if you're near a sofa or something like this, you can hold on, but just really float that left foot back. have my right knee still fairly bent, but I'm trying to activate the left leg. So the floating leg, I'm really focused on energizing that, but my right knee is fairly bent. Inhale. I'm going to slide my left knee behind my right ankle and come all the way down to sit on the mat. Seated spinal twist. Float your arms overhead. Take a twist to your right. Feel the right hand behind you. Wrap the left shoulder blade under. Look back over the right shoulder. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale, release the twist. Now start to shift forward. Bring your hands onto the mat, ground down that right foot. This time, let's see if we can make it a standing split. Start to energize the right foot more so there's a little more length in the right leg and that left heel is reaching up and back. The left leg feels really high. It doesn't matter how high it actually is. I'm coming to a chair pose. Step the left foot forward and bend the knees deeply. Float the arms. Again, take a little more weight into the right foot. See if you can pick up the left knee and come to stand with the left knee floating. Take your right hand to the outside of your left thigh. The left hand can reach back for the ceiling or it can be on the low back. You might stay here. You might just work on balance and wobble or you might extend the foot forward. Totally up to you. Take a breath. Release the twist, float the arms, see if you can keep that left leg floating. I'm gonna send my left hand forward, my right arm back, and move through. See if I can get my left hand down closer to the floor. So it's a Revolved Half Moon Pose. We've not done this together before in that transition like that. So feel free to bend the right knee, feel free to grab the couch or whatever. And then let's come back to our Chair Pose. Step the left foot to meet the right. Sit down into your chair. Mountain pose. Good. And now floats the arms. Exhale, bow forward, long spine. Find your flat back again. I'm tensing my fingertips and then start to ⁓ ground down into the ball of the left foot, pick up the right heel and just extend the right leg back. Focused here more on the right leg. for the moment. So the leg that's stretching back, because I have a little tripod here with my hands on the floor and my left foot. So that's a little easier ⁓ balance. Inhale, and then sit into your chair post, the right foot forward. Pick up the right heel, root down in that left foot, come up, see if you can just float the right knee. And then take the left hand to the outside of the right thigh. Maybe the right arm reaches back. Maybe you straighten the right leg. Maybe not. But you're focusing on the big toe of the left foot, pressing down into the mat. Release that. Float the arms. Slowly. Right arm goes forward, left arm goes back. There's a lot of stuff going on, but my attention is mostly on the sturdiness of my left leg. And now I come to this revolved half moon, nice and floaty. Right fingertips are to light. Chair pose. Mountain pose. Not easy. We're gonna add one more little thing and it's gonna move pretty quickly. I really wanted to focus on balance today, but ⁓ we're getting into it pretty fast. So just trust yourself. It'll be fine. Bopple, fall over. Try not to land on a coffee table or anything. Inhale, flex the arms. Exhale, bow forward. Do not land on a coffee table, to be clear. Inhale, flat back. Shift the weight to the right foot. See if you can step that left foot way back. We're coming to a skandhasana. Float the arms up. Straighten the right leg, bend the left knee. I'm gonna stay pretty high here. I'm not trying to get super low, because I'm still stretching out in the inner thigh of the right foot. Now shift your weight forward. Look out beyond your mat. Half moon pose. Ground down in that right foot, open up that left hip. Stay rooted in the right foot. Warrior III, shift. So you float the left arm forward, float the right arm up. Come up, bring the left knee. At some point if you need to set that left foot down in order to find your grounding, that's fine. Now my right hand travels to the outside of the left thigh or maybe the outside of the left foot. Breathe. Release the twist. that left arm down and the right arm up, revolved half moon. Then sit into your chair pose. How you doing? Calm your mind, calm your breath, inhale. Exhale, fold forward. Find your flat back and then start to move it towards your warrior three. So float the right foot back and then step way back the right foot. And we're coming to skandhasana. So lift the ball of the. Left foot, bend the right knee. Again, I'm not going super deep, because my legs are still warming up and still opening up. Look out beyond the edge of the mat. Half moon pose. Shift forward, press down in the left foot. Open up the hip. Breathe. So I came to the pinky edge of my left foot for a second, and that's why I got so wobbly. So I'm focusing on the instep. I'm coming all the way to stand. Bring the right knee up. Left hand finds the outside of the right thigh or the outside of the right foot. Breathe. Now we release all of that. We cartwheel the right hand down towards the floor, the left arm towards the ceiling, drop the right rib, revolve to half moon. share posts. Mountain Pose Come to stand, hands to heart center. See your day unfolding before you. Something today will happen that you didn't expect. Something today will happen where you feel yourself, the ground shifting underneath you. I guarantee it, it's life. So when it does, where will you put your attention? Where will you find humor? Where will you embrace all that you can rely on? The light that is in me bows to and honors the light that is in you. Namaste.