My Morning Practice

Although I am going to yoga classes four to five times per week, I intend to do a 30-min morning self-practice to complement my practice.     I started my morning practice this week and managed to get up and do the practice on Monday, Tuesday and today.   I skipped Wednesday as I had a late night and could not get myself out of bed when my alarm went off at 5.10 am.    I am finding that an early night makes it easier for me to keep my intention in the morning. 

My morning practice starts off with sitting in meditation for a few minutes to quiet my mind before going into some stretching poses to wake up my body.   I find that my body is quite stiff in the morning, especially my hamstrings. 

I decide what are the poses to practice as I move along, giving my body what it needs for the day.  Some of the poses I do include hip and shoulder openers and some core work.   I am doing the poses from Kino’s video below as I find it is great way to warm up the core while keeping me centered as I co-ordinate the movements with my breath.

I also try to do some of the poses that I know I need to work on such as my bunny hop to handstand and doing a headstand which should be practiced everyday as recommended in this post.

I end my morning practice with a 5-min savasana so that my body can soak up all the benefits from my practice.

I find that the morning self-practice is a wonderful soothing and energizing way to start off my day and helps to clear off the sleepiness from my system.   I am calm and less stressful in facing the morning traffic when I drive to work.

I hope that I would be able to keep up with my morning practice as I know it will bring a significant difference to my practice; honing my svadhyaya (self-awareness) as well as cultivating tapas (self-discipline) which are two of the five niyamas in the eight limbs of yoga.

"For me, yoga is not just a workout, it's about working on yourself." - Mary Glover