My life is a thousand miles per hour lately — all for really good reasons, but still.
People laugh when there hear me describe my personal yoga practice — a lot of meditation and 15 minutes here and there throughout the day just rolling around on the floor. In other words, my physical yoga practice is suuuuuper mellow.
When people look at me, they’re usually surprised when they find out that my classes are not “hard core”, fast moving, or particularly sweaty. It’s true, I get my physical exercise and workouts from everything but yoga.
For me, yoga is a compliment to the rest of my life. As my life gets faster and more chaotic, my yoga gets slower and far more simple.
Because let’s be real, between CrossFit, running, and sitting at my desk to write, I repeat the same motions/positions over and over — typically a recipe for an overuse injury. However, I credit a little daily mobility work while focusing on my breath for keeping me injury-free for nearly four years … cuz lord knows I’ve done plenty over those years to wear my body out otherwise.
And this is the reason why I created my own brand of online yoga videos called Yoga for Durability on Vimeo. Because while yoga hasn’t been a tool that I’ve used to condition or strengthen my body to get to the level I’m at today, it certainly has played a huge role in why my body is able to withstand the rigors of training and helped me build a more durable body.
So today for Fave Things Friday, I’m sharing the yoga pose I do every single day to prepare my body for sleep by unraveling accumulated tension in my body from sitting and working out. It doesn’t look like much but it really unwinds my muscles and my head like nothing else.
All you need is a yoga block (or something of a similar size and function), and 2-5 minutes. For FREE video demo of how to get into this pose & how to customize it for your body, click here.
Yoga doesn’t have to be doing certain poses or sequences. You don’t have to do it in a studio or even on a mat. Yoga is wherever and whenever you practice mindfulness and bring your whole self – body, mind, spirit – together in one place at the same time. That’s it.
Try it – just breathe & unwind. Let me know what you think!