Latest / Ten-Minute Mornings / Prepare Body & Mind for the Week | 10-Minute Morning Yoga
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: In this 10 minute mornings yoga practice, we'll breathe, move, and get ready body and mind for whatever the day or the week might hold. Hello, friends. Welcome to your daily flow 10 minute mornings practice. My name is James. That's Max over there. Be sure to practice till the end. We'll pull a card, set some intention for the day, and of course be sure to hit like and subscribe and leave comments and do all of those things. It'll help us grow our community. And you come up here. Good boy. Stay there. Come to all fours. Starting with just a little easy cat and cow, pull your arm forward. Go to your place. Good boy. Lift your chest, lift your tailbone, inhale. Exhale, untuck your toes around your spine. And he'll link it. Exhale around. Just trying to wake up the spider on this Monday morning. One more time, inhale. And exhale. Bring your right fingertips to your right ear. And then lift that right elbow up. I'm using my left hand like I'm trying to drag the floor to the left. Exhale, bring that right elbow down to the left wrist. Do that again. Inhale. Lift it up. Exhale. Bring it down. One more time. Inhale. This time I'm gonna thread the needle. Take that right arm all the way through. Bring my right ear to the mat. Stick my bum up in the air. Feel that stretch in the right shoulder. Crawl your left fingertips forward. Lengthen your left arm. Inhale. Exhale. And then walk the left hand back. Unwind that. We'll do that on the other side. Left fingertips, left ear. Lift the elbow up. Look up. Inhale. Exhale. Just think of bringing the elbow to the wrist. And then do it again. Inhale. Exhale. One more time. Inhale. Then release the fingertips. Through the needle. Left ear comes down to the mat. It feels good. Walk your left arm forward. So this is largely about the shoulder. The twisting. Those first twists were a little bit about waking up the spine. This is about opening up into the shoulder that's on the mat. Feels really good. Walk the right hand back. Flip the left arm up. and then come back to your neutral. Step back to a plank. Remember, shoulders come forward over knuckles. Inhale. Exhale, lower your knees, send your hips to your heels. Inhale, roll forward to plank. Really unfurl your spine. And then downward facing dog. Adjust if you need to. And do that again. Inhale, roll forward to plank. Exhale, release your knees, send your hips to your heels. Inhale the plank. Exhale the down dog. One more time. Inhale forward. Exhale, release the knees, hips to the heels. It's not very glamorous stuff. It's not exciting YouTube content maybe, but that's really not the point. The point is just to move and breathe and start to let our bodies and minds come into connection with one another. Really warming them both up. Walk your hands back to your feet. Bend your knees a lot, hold opposite elbows, sway out your hips. And then release those elbows. Roll yourself to stand one vertebrae at a time. Head and shoulders come up last. Step your feet together. So we're here at the back of our mats in mountain pose. Give your shoulders a nice shrug up. Float your arms overhead. Interlace your fingers, keep the index fingers pointing to the ceiling. Let's take a little bit of a back bend. And that starts with your feet. So press down on the feet. Lift up through the waist and then let your back bend come from this place of lengthening. It's not about how far back you go. It's about how long you make your body. And the spine is happens to be arching back. Inhale. Exhale. And then stand up tall. Take a side bend to your right and look up underneath the left arm. Inhale. Exhale and go the other way. So my fingers being interlaced, I'm able to use in this case my left arm as I bend to the left to the left. I'm sort of pulling on my right arm with it, and I can look up underneath the right by stepping now. Exhale, come back up and fold forward. Walk yourself forward to a plank. Take a vinyasa. So I'm gonna take knees, chest, chin. Cobra pose. Down or facing dog. Take a breath. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale, lift your right leg up and back down dog split. And then step the right foot between your hands. As you do that, feel like you're making that big cap back. So you have to really push the floor away to have space for the foot to come through. Then come up to a high lunge. Pressing back into the ball of the left foot to help guide my right knee forward. Energize the fingertips. Maybe roll out the wrist a little bit. That feels nice. Inhale. Let's take a twist. Hook the left elbow outside the right thigh. Always lengthen it to twist. Maybe energize the palms. Maybe look up. Definitely energize the palms. Maybe look up over the right shoulder. If prayer twist doesn't feel good in your body, you can bring the forearm outside instead. Take an inhale. And an exhale. Release the twist. And then step forward to a chair pose. Left foot comes to meet the right. Look up between your hands. We're waking up the legs now. Inhale. Exhale, divers pose. Come up onto the balls of your feet. Squeeze your legs together. Long spine. And sit back into your chair. Inhale. Exhale, bow forward. Inhale, look forward. Exhale. Let's just step back to plank position. Pause for an inhale. Exhale, lower knees, chest and chin. Inhale, cobra pose. Exhale down or facing dog. Pedal out your heels, shake out your head, check in with your down dog. And then down dog, split the left leg. Pull, let that heel pull you up and back. Inhaling. Exhale as you step the left foot forward. Remember, round the spine, pick knee to nose, and then get that foot through. Rise up. You can always just scoot it up if you need to. Pressing back into the ball of the right foot. Still a little bit of a bend in the right knee, it doesn't go perfectly straight. Then feel that energy rising up. Lengthen your waist, lean back. Feel a big stretch in my right quad and hip flex there. It feels really good. Inhale. Then we're gonna lengthen into that twist. Pug the right elbow outside the left thigh. Energize the palms together if they're in prayer. Remember, what's the rule? Anytime your body is in contact with the mat. or with itself. Those get those get the energy. And then most of everything else can kind of soften. If it's not in those points of contact, you can find some ease in those other places. Inhale. Exhale, release the twist. Step forward to your chair. Look up as you inhale. Divers pose as you exhale. Let's flow all of that. Inhale, chair pose. Exhale, bow forward. Inhale, lengthen, prepare. Exhale, step or float back. Taranga or knees chest. Upward facing dog or cobra. Downward facing dog. Down dog, split the right leg. Step the right foot between the hands. High lunge rise. Inhale. Exhale. Take your twist. Now can you just step the left foot forward, revolve chair pose? Inhale. Exhale, inhale, release the twist. Exhale, diverse pose. Inhale, chair. Exhale, bow forward. Inhale, lengthen. Exhale, step or float. Chaturanga. Inhale upward. Exhale, downward facing dog. Down dog, split the left leg. Inhale. Exhale. Step the foot forward. Inhale, rise up. High lunge. Exhale, twist to the right. Look down. That'll help with balance. Step the right foot forward. Revolved chair pose. Take a breath. Inhale. And exhale. Inhale, releases the twist. Exhale, divers pose. Inhale, chair. Exhale, mountain pose. How'd you do? Let's just come to sit. Sit back, have a seat. Taking a second, a little pause before we leave the safety of the mat for the real practice, the one that counts, that's out there. So just looking for a little inspiration to guide us into that real practice, into the practice that counts. How about this one? Non-grasping. Cling not to outcomes. Life will unfold as it will. And the pose is actually a bind. It's it's boat pose, but with the toe bind. I mean, I'll put a picture of the card on the screen in the short, but if you ever have worked on binds, physical binds in our physical asana yoga practice. You know that it's really it looks cool and it's really tempting to try to force the bind. As one of my teachers, Jen, says, and so I say all the time in my classes, you can lead a very full and rich life without ever touching your toes. And yet, when someone is able to touch their toes in shapes like that, or when someone is able to come into a bound side angle where you're Where you're holding your own hand wrapping around your body. Those poses look cool and it looks like you're really doing yoga. However, If you're contorting yourself into a shape that your body's not really ready for, if you don't quite have the shoulder mobility or the hamstring mobility to do things like boat pose with the toe bind, Then you're grasping literally to an idea that you think it's supposed to be, rather than trusting in your own experience and going to that place where you feel sensation, that place where you Where you might have to work, but never to pain and never to trying to fit someone else's idea of what yoga should look like. Of course the same thing goes out there. So I say of binds in our asana practice, they're meant to deepen the posture, not to change it. If you have to come out of alignment, then you either need an assist or you need props, you just need to set up the conditions for the pose and allow it to evolve as it's ready. Cling not to outcomes, life will unfold as it's as it will. That's exactly what happens. You create the basis of the shape, the foundations of the shape physically, and your body eventually opens into it. It takes a lot of patience. Takes a lot of patience. So when we go out there, when we leave our physical practice. Are we grasping to outcomes? I sure am. I do it all the time. I'm sure you do too. I want to look a certain way. I want to have a certain job, a certain level of prestige, I want to work. In certain places, whatever. So, what if our job is merely to set up the conditions for that achievement, for that outcome that we desire? And then allow the outcome to unfold as it will, maybe in a way that's better than we expected, maybe in a way that falls short of what we expected. Whatever it is, if we're creating the conditions for it, then we're open to receiving it. We're open to stepping into it. Pardon me. We're open to stepping into it when we're ready. Physically on the mat. Mentally, emotionally, professionally in the world. Let me know how goes. The light that is in me vows to honors and is very grateful for the light that is in you. Must day. Thank you for starting your day with me, your week, or whenever you find this video. Please be sure to like and subscribe and share and comment and do all of the things so that our community might grow together. That's how this YouTube stuff works: is that more engagement from you all means that people are liking the content and that. Other folks are more likely to find it. So I appreciate it. But if you don't, if you just get something out of this for yourself, that's okay too. I'm not grasping at a million followers. I sure would like it. But together we're creating the conditions. What happens, happens. Thank you so much. Have a great day and a great week. 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.