My Top 5 Favourite Yoga Poses
For Anytime & Anywhere
On your mat, get set, flow…
Developing a home practice can feel intimidating at times. Often we have thoughts flowing through the mind: I don’t have time. Where do I start? What comes next?
A home practice can be as simple as sitting on your mat for 5 minutes, stretching, breathing and witnessing. Ultimately our practice of yoga is designed to guide us inside, to listen to our inner wisdom and to the body, to feel what feels stuck, tight or tense, and so what we could benefit from most next.
Today, I invite you to try these 5 simple yet awesome poses and their variations with me. Feel free to do them anywhere and anytime you have a few moments to open your bodymind!
Your 10 to 15 minute practice
- Supta Baddha Konasana · Reclined bound angle
- Pigeon pose
- Adho Mukha Svanasana · Downward facing dog
- Wild Thing
- Balasana · Child’s pose
Put on some nice music, roll out your mat, light a candle and some incense, lay out your altar, or even just a flower or something beautiful to feast your eyes upon. Spend 5 or 6 full breath cycles in each pose and see how you feel after. Have some props around, a cushion or a block, so you can completely relax into these shapes and go deep. With the right support, these poses are available to all levels and bodies.
1. Supta Baddha Konasana · Reclined bound angle pose
This is one of my favourite poses to start and end class with, and anytime I find myself horizontal. It is a beautiful hip opener, groin softener and heart and chest opener. Energetically, we are cultivating letting go, allowing, receiving and surrendering. I like to practice this pose with a cushion or block under the back of my heart, and maybe some blocks under my knees too.
Hang out here for a few minutes. Feel the support of the earth below you as it holds you, receives and transforms what you are releasing, what no longer serves you, with each exhale. Feel how nourishing it is to surrender to the knowing that you are supported.
2. Pigeon pose
Another beautiful grounding, supported pose. Pigeon, in all its variations, is my favourite go-to hip opener and I practice it every day. Many of us hold a lot of tension in the hips, and the hips represent our ability to move forward in the world with grace and ease. Enjoy the yummy external rotation of the hips, the stretch to the hip flexors, the release of tension and the growing range of motion in the legs. Hips are also famously known in yoga as the place where we store stuck energy, and it is said that the cellular memory of grief and sadness lives there. Go to your edge, breathe there, and enjoy the softening, opening, surrendering and relaxing.
Then fold forward into sleeping swan, and when you feel open, try a more engaged, heart opening king pigeon.
3. Adho Mukha Svanasana · Downward facing dog
The classic resting pose. As yoga teachers often remind students, this can be a resting pose when the alignment of your attitude and your body are right. Spread your hands wide, shoulder distance apart, feet hip distance apart. Let your knees have a soft bend as you lengthen the tailbone, draw belly to spine and roll the shoulders away from your ears. Let the weight be even between hands and feet, and explore what opens as you breathe into the places that feel tight.
Play with dynamic stillness: each inhale creates more length in the spine and space in the body, each exhale deepens and expands. Then play with three-legged dog, lifting one leg at a time, and open the hip into scorpion tail.
Variations
4. Wild Thing
Backbends are heart openers and energising poses. Many yogis would agree this is one of their favourites. It is so fun, beautiful, strong, fierce and open, and so satisfying to stretch the whole front line of the body: the front of the thighs, the side body and the throat. When I practice this pose I feel vibrant and alive. If I’m fully warmed up and open in the spine, I’ll play with taking it into a full wheel.
5. Balasana · Child’s pose
Forward folds are calming poses. You can gift yourself this pose anytime in your practice: when you need a rest, when you want to come back to the breath, when the mind gets lost in a labyrinth of thoughts. Play with the variations. Knees together or knees wide, forehead or chin to the earth, arms stretched forward, or walk them to each side for a side stretch. Try the arms alongside the body, or elbows rooted beside your shoulders with your hands in prayer towards the sky.
I hope you enjoy your practice today!