keep your energy moving with some simple yoga

It's spring here in New Zealand. Cold, stormy, rainy. But we have had a few (not many) beautiful spring days. 

photo by Hans Vivek @ unsplash. Viveka actually is an intelligence whereby we are able to make good decisions

And as Auckland, where I live is still in lockdown, I was thinking that some yoga to fill some time would be great.

keeping the yoga easy, often means that we actually do keep doing it 

I have a basic morning yoga routine. Seldom changes. I hadn't done it for quite a while as I had been unwell. But I'm all good now, so the yoga is back on. 

Usually, as in non-lockdown times, I really only miss Wednesdays. I'm teaching yoga in town those mornings. Tuesdays and Thursdays I'm out the door mega early (still dark early) and home by nine in the morning, so I do the yoga then. 

It's not a long routine, and it suits me. Which I do think is the point of any exercise routine. That it suits oneself.

It's a maintainance program. 

Maintaining

** my body - hormones, nervous system, flexibility and such

** my equilibrium. It honestly makes a difference in this area. As modest as the routine is

I've added a couple of things so that it looks like this at the moment:

short seated meditation. Yes, even before coffee. I make the coffee straight after meditation. (hehe)

* three rounds of a breathing technique (link here)

*fifty breaths of a another cleansing breathing exercise, a very old and probably hardly known version, but it suits me. Working up to one hundred quick breaths. For the life force. 

I do both of these are done standing, so no chance to muck around (I excel at mucking around). Honestly, the moment that I sit down, I just get Lost In Space and forget to finish the yoga. So standing it must be. I absolutely loathe warriors and other standing poses, so I seldom do them. I just keep moving through my routine.

it helps to loosen up first

Almost always some moving yoga warm-ups like:

• neck rotations. **  If you have degeneration on your neck vertebrae, then of course you wouldn't do this. I would suggest asking your bone person - doctor or otherwise, what type of neck movements you could do regularly
• shoulder joint rotations. ** I might swing my arms in one direction then the other. Or put my fingers on top of my shoulders and make circles with my elbows.
• I always also move the whole shoulder area, maybe shrugging, or circling the whole area, getting as much movement as I can **
• I put my hands, fingers interlaced, behind my head (not my neck) and push my hands and head against each other, and hold this. This is great for keeping us upright rather than falling prey to the increasing upper back forward slope over the years
• trunk twisting  ** I have two quick versions and I alternate each day
• doing hip circling like using a hula hoop **
• sometimes I do standing leg circles from each hip in turn. Usually a person would do them lying on the back, but I just want to get things done asap in the morning
• I might do foot flexing, and ankle circles.
• I shake my legs, then my arms and hands using strong exhalations **

** these are my minimum body warmups and looseners. I know that many people don't do them, but I truly believe that these, rather than hard core stretch yoga, are what keep us having a good range of movement.

flexibilities restore and maintain not only by increasing our range of motion but also by increasing our levels of flowing energy

If you teach yoga, try doing a few to start a class. They do make a difference. My first yoga teacher, so long ago, was seventy eight. We did standing flexibilities like these at the start of every class and they were also done each morning in his Ashram, before asanas. He was amazing with his poses. And I, the biggest klutz of all when I started, could do all sorts of poses quite quickly. I'm convinced that it was these flexibilities that enabled me to do so.

These sort of exercises are highly restorative after any unwellness - physical, mental, emotional. Whatever. They get the energy flowing through our meridians. These are channels which circulate life energy throughout our body, influencing our organs. This is different from the channels which are known as flows, or nadis, that have chakra points along them. Both are important. And yet, although modern yoga gets into various muscles and things like fascia (connective tissue under our skin), somehow the basics are often overlooked. By basics I mean the meridian energy and chakra energy. Working on these two aspects is so darn easy. I don't care about this muscle and that muscle (yawn). I want to treat my body as a whole entity and nuture it in easy, loving ways. 

What do we do body-wise for chakra energy? Well, that's another post.

healing and energy flows

I do Maori healing which is very much involved with meridians and the pressure points which are situated on the meridians. When these points are blocked, it means that our emotions and/or mind and corresspondingly our body,  are blocked too. I mean, really - who of us isn't blocked on levels? The healing that we get from working on these points is so profound. Accupuncture and Shiatsu work on them too. As does Jin Shin Jyutsu which does it slightly differently - I have a friend who does this and it is beyond beautiful. 

And of course, many of the yoga postures do stretch and/or compress these meridians very favourably too.

back to my easy peasy routine

Then a couple of extremely relaxed "stretches"

• side to side
• bending backwards
• rolling down into a forward bend

My number for all of the above, is doing everything three times. This means that I'll get it done, and it's not too daunting first thing. From here if I've got time, I can add some (modified) sun salutes. And/or a lovely little floor routine which takes less than eight minutes.

Honestly, that's it. Short and sweet. Do-able. Not at all daunting. Easy enough to do that I get a severe case of the guilts if I don't do it. And it truly does help me with keeping my blood sugar more stable. And stops my back hurting. 

yoga is everywhere now, so it's easy to access doable routines

YouTube has hundreds - or is it thousands? of yoga videos. From ten minutes to over an hour. Choose a routine that suits you and that you can do, now. When that gets easy, try another harder or longer one. Progressing in this way is so beneficial to our body. 

I've also got many routines on this blog

 

I fit in other exercise too. Here and there. However, having a small easy routine that you can do in your sleep and makes it easy to maintain health - honestly, it's invaluable.

** click here for a post about maintaining yourself with a daily practice

** this link here is more for yoga teachers and has some good hints for everybody

** and lets not forget the latest post on my lifestyle blog, link is here