I discovered Yoga about a year or so ago thanks to my lovely wife. I didn’t really know much about it, other than I thought it seemed a little weird. I always saw “interesting” people standing in the middle of the park doing “interesting” things with their bodies, so what else could I think other than that it was “interesting”?
But then I tried it. Just like most things, you really don’t know until you try. My first Yoga experience was a good one. Using Yoga For Dummies, I got my feet wet and felt great after my first session. I felt invigorated and like I went through a light workout.
Physically I would say that Yoga is basically glorified stretching. Actually some of the poses that we do were very similar to many of the stretches I used to do when I played competitive sports.
5 minutes a day!
But anyway, recently when I haven’t been able to devote 30 minutes or an hour to a Yoga session, I have been just doing 5 minutes. I can go through about 6-8 poses and quickly feel a whole lot better. As a desk worker, my body gets mad at me and wants to move around a bit. 5 minutes of Yoga almost always brings the refreshing kick that I need.
So, if you haven’t tried Yoga, I say give it a shot. And if you have and don’t have a lot of time to devote to exercise, I say try just doing a few poses each day – it is surprisingly effective.
I do mini sessions too! I think mine last about 10-15minutes. I basically do some Sivananda/hatha yoga style sun salutations to get things moving and stretched. I do a few real slow then relax in corpse pose, then I do a few more- picking up the pace.
Then I do leg lifts (good ab workout), shoulder stand, plow if I’m not to stiff, bridge (my favourite! such a release!) then the reach for your toes stretch, then a headstand.
Unless I’m in a yoga class I can’t focus much longer than that in my apt with my desk staring at me and the phone ringing.
I love yoga but getting to the gym, etc always seemed a pain.. love the 5 minute idea!