Name: 10 min Morning Yoga Stretch - The BEST Way to Start Your Day!
Uploaded: 2024-11-17T02:21:36.000Z
Duration: 13 min 3 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

My name is Cassandra and I'm going to take you through this short morning yoga practice.

Sentences with advanced comparative

This is a good mix of strength, stretch, as well as balance.

No props are required and I would say it's probably best for intermediate or beginner to intermediate students.

So if you're looking for a little bit of a challenge, this is a good one to try out.

So you can bring your big hands apart and just bring the knees as wide as is comfortable so that you're getting some kind of a stretch through the inner thighs.

And as you walk your hands out, we're going to lift up onto our fingertips to keep the elbows off of the mat just for a few breaths so that you can really feel this reach and the lift that we have through the shoulders.

And at the same time, it's almost like we're trying to press the shoulders and armpits down.

Using the power of your breath here as you inhale, feel your rib cage expand front to back, side to side.

See if you can crawl those fingertips out a little bit further forward and then relax the arms down, palms flat to the mat.

These morning classes are a great opportunity to set the tone for the day, to maybe choose a one-word intention.

So one more big deep breath in and out through the nose.

And we'll make our way up into our tabletop stance on hands and knees, walking the hands in, bringing the knees back in.

Let's take three rounds of our cat and cow, so flexion and extension of the spine.

As you inhale, drop the belly, lift the gaze, curl tailbone up.

And on the exhale, reverse this motion as you push the floor away from you and broaden through your upper back.

Now we're going to continue to do the same thing, but adding the legs.

So as you inhale, your right leg, the knee, the toes all reach up towards the sky.

And as you exhale, tap your knee to your nose as you round and contract.

You're welcome to just hang out where you are.

If you want to challenge your balance and flexibility, you can reach back with your left hand, grabbing a hold of that right foot for your tiger pose.

I'm kind of kicking my foot into the palm just to get a little bit of a deeper backbend and to also stretch through my left shoulder.

Straighten your right leg and roll to the inner edge of that right foot.

So this is your modified side plank Vashisthasana.

You're going to inhale, squeeze and lift that leg up.

You're grabbing a hold of your right foot, this time with the right palm.

And just like before, see if you can kick the foot into the hand to arch through your back a little more and to stretch through your shoulder, trying to keep our ankle, knee and hip all in one line.

So from tabletop, just round and contract to release this into the second side.

So three rounds of cat and cow, adding the left leg.

Inhale, drop the belly, lift the gaze, reach through your toes.

Lift that left leg back up and either hold where you are or come into tiger.

This time my right hand is reaching back.

Stay super strong and stable through your left arm.

Try to keep your gaze steady on something that's not moving to help with balance.

Into your modified side plank, your right hand comes back down.

Straighten that left leg, roll to the inner edge of that left foot and extend your left arm up towards the sky.

As we point through the toes, we're going to do five lifts and toe taps.

So inhale for five and down, four, three, two, and one.

Hold where you are, bend into your left knee and see if you're able to grab a hold of that left foot and maybe start to push the foot into the hand.

So there's a little bit of a backbend here, balancing on the right hand and the right knee.

Tabletop to your cat pose, round and contract, broaden through your shoulder blades.

So hands can be a little bit past your shoulders.

Tuck the toes under and lift your hips all the way up and back.

Bend your knees as much as you'd like here.

Don't worry about whether or not your heels are touching the floor.

Instead focus on lengthening your spine and really stretching out through your arms.

Stretch your right leg up towards the sky, bend your right knee, open up through your hip.

So really squeeze your heel in towards your glute.

Right foot steps forward to the top of the mat.

Back heel spins parallel to the shorter edge of your mat and then push into the feet to lift on up.

Palms facing down and just make sure that back arm doesn't drop down.

You want to have it as high as the shoulder.

Keep sinking a little deeper into that front knee.

Toe heel, that back foot in just a couple inches to narrow your stance.

You can slide that right arm forward and then drop the right palm down.

If you need more support in this pose, just grab a hold of your shin to prop yourself up.

Otherwise you can work on strengthening your obliques by kind of just hovering and pushing your palm into your calf.

Get more of a side bending stretch as you reach that left arm up overhead.

So my back knee is going to come down to floor.

If you'd like to add on, you can add your quad stretch.

I'm bending into my left knee and I'm going to pull my heel in towards me.

Very carefully release the hold of the back foot and step back.