Yoga Archives - Page 5 of 7 - Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Lazy Yoga Accessories Mood Boost

Yoga accessories are a must for good yoga form, comfort, and help with balance for your Vata, Kapha, and Pitta. So is a recipe for hot water pastry and adding your balancing good foods below.

yoga accessories like a bolster, a block, and a blanket are classic. The yogi tea adds to pampered yoga wellness. — Yoga accessories like a bolster, a block or two, and a blanket are classic. The yogi tea adds to pampered yoga wellness. 🫖

Using yoga accessories or props on a lazy day can really help boost your mood.

And a peaceful mood is one you want to stay in daily whether you’re feeling busy and active before the holidays or lazier after Christmas has come and gone.

You may teeter back and forth. And eating well is one ingredient that can help restore balance.

Like this well-spiced open-faced savory pastry I made half with spinach, chickpeas, oni0ns, and a punchy five-spice blend (cinnamon, fennel, star anise, cloves, peppercorns) to balance Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. And the other half is a balanced mix of carrots, potatoes, scallions, and tarragon. Maybe this inspires you and puts you in a better mood?

Hot water pastry with veggies. Recipe below. ⬇️

And speaking of mood balancing…

When I used to visit malls on the weekend as a downtime pastime, after a while I’d get bored… the look-forward to anticipation feelings turned to drained and uninspired energy. I couldn’t wait to exit…

Then there usually was a line to get out of the parking lot and into traffic, especially during the holidays. Sound familiar?

We didn’t have online Black Friday shopping so it was a sheer annual mayhem event.

Since those days, our world has evolved and so have we. And these days I steer away from malls like the Black Plague.

…But whether you do or not, you know the feeling of too much of a good thing becomes numbing to the mind-body.

That can be how you feel about some adventures and projects you’d rather stay away from even if they started out okay. You can avoid some, but others require you and your endurance, like certain work tasks and travel stress.

Those growing tired moods can sink in and take a while to lift, especially if they’re our regular routines in life.

…like sweeping kitchen crumbs for the 10^th time or chores you hate doing. And if we ignore them and feel lazier than usual, that can turn into a Kapha imbalance.

Or if we feel irritated and uninspired…. then not making a change can lead to burnout. It doesn’t usually happen overnight but it can happen one day if you reach your snapping point. That’s more of a Pitta imbalance.

With both types of imbalances, lazy yoga poses can help you get your active balance and peaceful mood back.

(Corpse pose is a great one to relax your body and calm your mind.)

I know when I find time to just be still, sitting in silence, that’s when I feel the most peace. Maybe that’s how you feel?

The reason is centering allows you to focus on the calmness of this moment and the body can stop working so hard.

And by focusing on the silent moments, and not focusing on the busy activities like shopping or even watching Netflix (that can be good when you need a ‘lil downtime break), the quietness helps your mind to relax and to feel good again.

And in the silence, if you find your mind is racing, that’s a sign of an anxious Vata mind.

Sometimes we feel that way and to feel balanced, in my life journey, I found that getting a peaceful mind is easier when you tune into the right source for at least 8 waking hours a day and make it your habit in life.

Our lives are constructed in 24 hours of which 8 is good for sleeping, 8 for working, and 8 for doing everything else.

So during that everything-else time slot, that’s when it’s good to build in time to recharge, working on passions, and focusing mostly on less external influences (and maybe disconnecting from the world for minutes at a time).

And it’s good to find time to take breaks during work and about a weekend day’s worth off to rest. Not everyone can take all of Sunday off.

And I find staying in that rhythm is how you can stay balanced, happy, and in a peaceful mood year-round so you can show up in life as your best.

That type of lifestyle years ago would have been laughed at or not taken seriously by my business and corporate worker companions. But now they are reconsidering too as wellness is part of the discussions.

Our world is changing for better health and wellness, thank goodness!

Because having consistency and wellness routines in your lifestyle and mind helps prevent life burnout or waking up one day unhappy or depressed.

Feeling those ways can take more time to backtrack and restore, and they usually have an aftermath of sorts. It’s better all around to take time out daily to restore and prevent.

And if you like the idea of preventatively restoring daily, then one small way is with lazy yoga moves. That’s what I call it anyway. Those are perfect on the days when it’s hard to move quickly, you had a rough night before, or it’s dreary weather outside.

On those days, you know intense exercise is out of the question. But you can use that more tiring day for your lazy exercise day that still helps to invigorate your body and restore your mind.

We know that exercise is good for cognitive and physical fitness. So to stay in the game (of active life even when you’re not feeling it), you can use yoga props to help you engage and maybe even get off the couch if that’s what you find yourself doing and want to change that (…and your heavy Kapha mind may want to resist).

And those days would be a good time to do core work. When you have yoga accessories, doing ab work is not as challenging once you get moving… and maybe along with the right entertainment in the background.

So, here are a few yoga accessories and ideas that you can try and maybe build into a new habit:

Yoga Accessories:

A yoga block (or two), or a Yoga Wheel

Blocks are great especially in Bridge pose where you can turn the block vertically so that the longest side helps raise your back up to build a bridge higher than you can go without a block. This can really help you feel better instantly.

The evovled yoga wheel yoga accessories work in similar ways in a Bridge pose. I’m a bit old school as I prefer the block that raises up a new building structure without moving on you… and maybe a bit burned out from 90s fitness and turn-of-the-century gadgets and props that never got used more than a few times. 😉

Straps

Straps are great for keeping you focused on the guiding strap lines and that support your legs to various angles in the air when you’re laying flat back. These are great for helping you with flexibility that becomes more important as you grow wiser (and older too).

Bolster Yoga Pillow

Bolsters are pretty practical pillows to have around. And if you don’t have one, sometimes you can get creative and find lumbar pillows that some couches come with. And you can use other pillows and cushioned furniture pieces to be very effective.

I actually use an IKEA cushioned cube that I can rest my calves on when I’m laying back on my mat, and then do easy-ab roll-up work. And still, get all the benefits.

And then I can turn around and use the cube as a table or an ottoman. Now that’s usefulness! (No more ab roller devices and machines that take up additional space!)

Breathe device apps

I like the Apple Watch where you can feel the inhale and exhale vibrations of the Breathe app. It’s great for getting centered and intentional on your breath.

Another great prop (that you can add to your yoga accessories):

Wall

Legs Up the Wall pose is a great resting pose. You scoot and seat yourself as close to a wall as possible, and then lay back. Your legs are straight up against the wall. That should feel really good as you release tension from your legs.

You can rest your arms straight out and turn your head from side to side and be intentional to see different perspectives.

This can feel really good on lazy yoga days. The point is to never give up on yourself in any season of life!

Be the tortoise in Aesop’s fable. 🐢

You can be just one good move or pose away from getting you back into a good swing and crossing the finish line.

And people are back in yoga classes. …maybe that’s you or just what you need to keep your calm through the holiday and into the new year. Btw, are you counting down the days?

In addition to building a better Bridge yoga pose, I have my baking calendar on my mind. I’m coming up with building a better Yule log swiss roll this year from peppermint inspiration. 🍥

For savory hot water pastry, you can be inspired by this recipe.

Print Recipe

Easy Hot Water Pastry

Course Breakfast, lunch

Cuisine American

Author Brandy @ Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Ingredients

flour of choice (whole wheat and plain flour work well)
hot-warm water, room temperature
1 tbsp of butter (for larger batches and healthy, use a little more butter about a pat of butter per serving)
pinch of salt

Instructions

Mix flour, water, and salt. Add pat of butter to melt. Work into a dough.
Shape into a shell or desired shape.
Bake until golden brown color.
Add cooked toppings desired (e.g. cheese, cooked veggies), and pop back into the oven for a few minutes.

Dancer Pose for Balance, Flexibility, and Creativity

Dancer pose is one of those poses that has everything… showing grace, balance, flexibility, and creativity. You see your limits and your possibilities.

Whether you love yoga or not, you can use Dancer pose productively for the next steps (or habit stack on top of another activity or intention).

Dancer pose is a good opportunity to feel like you’re already at that place you want to be in this season (where you can lift yourself off the floor ground).

You can believe yourself into your next destiny or destination. And you can feel fearless in the moment that can carry you in your day.

And it doesn’t require much. 😊

You can do Dance pose anywhere you can stand and spread out.

The middle of a room is a good place, but a good way to start off whether you’re new to the pose or not quite awake in the a.m… is to do the pose when you’re in the kitchen waiting for warm water or food to heat up or drinking a glass of water.

You don’t need to be cooking or baking (but that’s an option!). And you can use your kitchen counter or a solid above waist flat ledge to help you balance.

Or you can use a chair with the back of the chair facing you to support you. It’s not just sitting chair pose. 😉

This’ll give you the edge for a better Dancer pose stretch and to give you a little foundation until you feel stable enough.

It may not be as pretty as free form, but it can give you your best form for the day. And you can stretch your flexibility further.

After you get used to how it feels, you can get free from your nearby props.

Dancer is a great balancing pose where you feel empowered to do more than you would. You can feel like you’re on top of the world.

It’s a graceful pose, and if you like Barre classes, this might be right up your alley! You feel a bit like a ballerina. 🩰

So to start, rest your palms on the counter if you’re using a support. Then take one hand and grab the same side ankle and then extend that leg behind you. And let go of the opposite hand and aim it in front of you.

You’re now in a balanced Dancer pose (without worry of falling or wobbling over).

You’ll feel a nice stretch up to your backside and mid-back. So you don’t have to be on a mat face up or down.

And when you do this standing pose for 30 seconds maybe on each side, you’ll feel tension release from your back.

You feel lightweight like you’re floating a bit. It’s as close to a bird with wings as we’ll get.

And as Dancer pose becomes (or is) second nature to you, and you can do before you’ve had your morning caffeine jolt if that’s your jam, then here’s one added useful intention:

Content creation that has grown wildly since around 2015.

I’d been regularly blogging since 2009 (yeah… I’m one of the ones that started back when Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were the big social media sites, and blogs fell in those categories).

Back when social media was the wild-wild west. 😁

And now this is how we regularly communicate with those we know, and grow ideas and do business life with.

So getting in the habit of doing Dancer first thing can be the way you habit stack to grow your ideas.

…And maybe take a pause to hold the pose a little longer than usual and come up with one creative idea as your intention.

We’ve gotten past the point of just sharing about our immediate lives. We want to share more (in what that means to each of us) and expand what we’re about.

So a hobby or interest that we’re passionate about can be conveyed in photos, videos, and words.

Little did I know that I would be posting about my healthy baked creations. But this has become my passion over the past few years, second to writing.

Dancer pose can help you find what it is that you want to communicate to the world in the first place.

Then when you content create regularly you build something special.

We all start off wondering if we’ll stick with what we’re working on, or branch into something else. It’s all good. It’s always a branching off to the next step on your journey.

And when you put a creative intention out to the world, and you want to contribute as a content creator in some way, that opens you up inside

…Doesn’t that sound appealing to have a unique purpose along with some other activities you love, such as visiting the same stores where there’s comfort and familiarity?

You can run the same track but doing something different with your tracks helps you find a new dimension in your life.

We’re all meant for so much in this life if we stay open.

Your creativity has no limits.

You’re only limited by your beliefs and limitations.

When I went from a traditional college to corporate work path, my creativity drifted and stayed hidden.

Only when I picked up writing as a regular habit and practice did my creative juices get ignited where I wasn’t needing to start and stop to let the creativity flow out of me.

And Dancer pose was one of the first yoga poses that let me feel like I was free to do something outside my structured corporate mindset I had grown.

And you have something in you that is wanting to come out, and the world would love to see… and more of! Unleashing yourself (and maybe with a Dancer pose to start) brings out your best.

For many of us, when we’re in school we’re chasing good grades. But grades never determine whether you’ll have a happy or successful life.

Those that chose an unconventional path to drop out or take a creative arts path I believe helped themselves out, so they could find their deep creative well earlier on in life before practical adult responsibilities grew.

I didn’t do that as I took the traditional path.

The good news is, the second best time to realize your dream or life’s work (especially if you didn’t like your first career or path)… is NOW.

You can restart and pivot. Dancer pose is a good metaphor for pivoting. It can help free up your mind to feel untethered and get on a leveling playing field with yourself so there are no more limitations!

You can start at any age, wherever you are, and whatever you’re doing in life. Your past doesn’t dictate your future abilities.

So use your dreams intentions to bridge your creative self (hmm, a dancer maybe?) that brings new ideas, meaning, and purpose to your life.

That’s where I’m heading now… and you can too on your path.

To finish off your Dancer pose, you can rest your right palm on your heart to get centered and reach back your left hand to meet your left ankle.

You got this! 💃🏻

Seated Yoga Poses For Flexibility

Seated yoga poses are popular and good for your flexibility. And you can do some yoga to restore your daily chair and weekly car seated positions.

I’m highlighting the Spinal Twist for seated yoga poses below, that goes waaay back with me… and practical car yoga poses we all can use when doing regular driving, or taking long drives and car vacation trips.

If you’re spending time driving, car seated yoga poses can really help ease the pain especially when the thermostat reaches a new boiling point.

Seated as the driver in the lumbar position in your car seat, your back and right side get stressed.

So when you can, you want to reverse the damage. That’s different than doing chair yoga or seated yoga poses in an office chair I talked about last time.

You can do these seated yoga poses in the car!

One way is: when you’re sitting in the driver’s seat, you can put the front of your palm on the back of the passenger seat and press forward on the opposite seat.

That feels so good up the arm.

You’ll immediately feel a nice stretch up your primary arm nerve near your bicep muscles that may just be what the doctor ordered to restore any arm pain.

This is good to do at stoplights when your eyes are on the light or during driving rest breaks.

My standard car clutch driving days are over, but if you drive a standard shift, this is a really gooood small exercise that’ll help you!

You can also send your right arm back to the back part of the car between the driver and passenger seat, where there should be plenty of air space to do some car yoga tricks.

Then bend down at your right wrist.

Ohhh... that can zap the radial nerve in just the right nerve pain releasing angle.

The first few seconds can hurt so good!…

Plus, save you from physical therapy for repeated motions that irritate your body parts that get the most wear-and-tear.

And since we put our right foot down regularly to hit the accelerator and brakes, our right leg gets overly used too.

So to straighten out the leg nerve pain, ideally, you would want to lay down.

But in your car you can’t, so you can play a little game of Twister here on yourself following these instructions when you take a car park rest break… and without getting any funny stares from the people in the cars nearby. 💚💛💙❤️

You may need to push your car seat back to do this more comfortably and have more leg room away from the steering wheel.

And that’s another game you can play: to not hit the yoga car horn. That’s probably more challenging than getting in this pose. 😊

Then, rest your right foot on top of your left thigh (with a sharp bend in your right knee). And lift your left leg and foot off the car floor slightly. That’s important, so you don’t use your left leg to ground you (and some call that cheating in a game 😉). And so you can get the right resistance.

Then, take your right hand and push upwards from underneath your right knee, up towards the car ceiling. You should feel a nice feeling stretch in your right butt cheek and lower right back side and down your right hamstring where you feel tension when you put the pedal to the metal.

It’s definitely worth the effort relieving right leg strain… and well, that’s what I’m talkin’ about!

And that should restore-fix you until you pull over for your next car driving break.

…Which hopefully isn’t to fix a flat tire, that I can’t help you with. But I CAN help you restore your body vehicle! 🧘🏻‍♀️

And when you get back to flat land where your mat is, you can do this move laying down where both your legs are off the mat. And where you look like you’re kinda doing an abdominal crunch, that btw, wouldn’t hurt to do either since you’re already there. 😊

Your abdominals help support your back. We can give love to our gut in more than ways than one!

And after that move, don’t forget to do your supporting Bridge pose, Happy Baby …yes, you!

And then when you sit back up, you can cross your legs in your Seated yoga poses position. 🧘🏻‍♀️

Seated Spinal Twists

…When I was a kid, I remember we did a variation called sitting Indian style back when we were young and innocent 😉

And we’d been doing Spinal Twists since elementary school gym days to warm us up (before we knew there was a yoga name). We were sitting in seated yoga poses on a big and thick cushion mat either yellow, blue, or maroon red that I still remember being heavy vinyl material.

On those mats, we did tumble exercises like summer-saults, maybe named after the summer season that was meant to be fun and inventive. 🤸🏻

We also did our rotating torso seated spinal twists that I enjoyed, even though we didn’t need the stretch or mindfulness so much back then as we do now, older (!!).

And those twists complemented the real activities and past times.

On good summer days, my childhood was spent rafting on a lake or going to the swimming pool which are great ways to cool off. I didn’t see it as a camp staycation back then, but that’s what we did.

…And that’s the first time I remember being able to do yoga. And the inkling that I could do yoga years later was confirmed after the first few years I tried it as an adult when yoga started taking root in the Western world.

…Goes to show ya, you don’t need many yoga moves or seated yoga poses to give you that edge, in case yoga ain’t your thing. Just one pose can do.

Liked the seated Spinal Twist did for me.

And if that’s not motivation enough… a practical adult application can be working on restoring your hunched forward rolled shoulders that most of us carry daily.

Another one of the great restoring seated yoga poses where you can work on this is:

Bend one knee and thread the same side arm through the hole between your knee and the mat or floor.

Then reach and wrap that hand as far to the other side of your body as you can. It’s sort of a strange feeling if you’re not used to this pretzel-like seated position.

You could grab or rest your hand on your other inside thigh leg. Wherever your hand lands, make it purposeful where you know where each finger is. It’s like octopus tentacles grabbing onto a sturdy surface. 🐙

In yoga, when you make contact with other body parts, and you know where your arms and feet are at all times, that’s big progress!

One way to practice this is in Tree pose: you can move your opposite foot and rest it on various parts up and down your leg while skipping over your knee.

Then when you’ve settled on your temporary Tree, try different arm poses like straight up in the air or “Y” hands in the air like you’re doing the “YMCA.”

…Oh my, that’s an oldie.

Or keep at heart center in prayer hands. Now, that’s really expressing your yoga postures.

You get out of the structured metal confines of a car.

But sometimes you don’t have that choice, as most of us spend a decent amount of time in a car at some point.

And in the summer, that can be work keeping cool and staying hydrated.

Because when you’re in a car, you don’t want to drink a lot of beverages. That’ll slow you down having to make a rest stop.

For longer trips, I usually drink up a day or two before traveling to have some reserves to go off on.

Chair Yoga + The Beatles Yoga Inspiration

Chair yoga poses will be a lifesaver if you’re like many work in an office and sit in a chair most the day since your shoulder, neck, and back posture are compromised.

And if that’s your daily work ritual, then these poses described below will help…

Towards the end, you’ll also learn what structure I think in Liverpool (that’s home to The Beatles band) is an inspiration for a special yoga pose at day’s end!

…oh, and I won’t even let Sir Paul McCartney ruin it as he’s looking pretty calm and relaxed here in his leaning pose outside the Liverpool cavern he used to play at. 😀

…His work, btw, at Abbey Road wasn’t one like the modern worker. And if you’re working in an office, most likely you’re not just leaning around with nothing to do.

In any day, your body is under stress and experiencing some form of tension even if it doesn’t feel that way at the time.

And especially if you’re in front of a computer, it’s smart to invest in a desk keyboard and keyboard rolling tray for your desk.

You don’t want to type long form on your laptop’s keyboard if that’s your habit… or a keyboard that sits on your lap… or even on top of a desk where your wrists are unnaturally raised.

…Those were all big no-no’s that I learned the hard way.

Small, but repetitive moves wreak havoc on your wrists, neck, shoulders, and back over time. That’s what happened to me for one season… where I had daily pain in my upper arm from the repetitive typing motions.

Then I learned to stop and do yoga, and bend my right wing (arm) in just the right way to restore the stress pain daily.

Now that’s a smart move… combining yoga and therapy all in one without having to leave my chair or spend a dime 😉

I also recommend a rectangular pillow on the small of the back. Remember, your lower back supports your mid to upper back and everything above, so treat it carefully.

But even with the right ergonomic office tools and desk alignment, you’ll still find chair yoga moves super helpful in your day.

Chair Yoga Poses 🪑

Just like it sounds, chair yoga you may have heard of is done in your chair.

You could set a reminder every hour to do some chair yoga. …or when you take a sip of your warm beverage …or are waiting for the computer screen to refresh or take action.

For starters, turn your neck to look out your left and right sides.

That also gives you an opportunity to take a quick looksy outside your window and see what’s happenin’ or around your room for an eye break.

Then, tilt your head down to each shoulder from side to side, and look up toward the ceiling.

Roll your neck in a circular motion from front to back and reverse the roll. That should feel really gooood!

And when you’re warmed up…

You can do a variation of a Cow face pose that you would normally do on a mat, but you can do it in your office chair too. You can do the pose with the top half of your body where you reach one arm over your shoulder to your back, and then grab the opposite arm and hand coming from underneath your back on the opposite side.

If your hands don’t meet or clasp at the fingers, you can use a towel as a prop to grab onto. One side is usually tighter than the other. Keep trying. And alternate sides. Your shoulders should feel instantly better.

This is a great chest opener for rounded shoulders that are usually rolled forward on a computer desk.

When you breathe, you can use “moo” as your “om” exhale sound for this pose. Now you won’t forget the name of this Cow face pose. 🐮

Cow face also helps to reverse your arm tension that’s usually swinging in forward motion.

[Just FYI, it’s good to send your arms behind you or your back whenever you can. You could grab your opposite elbows behind your back as an easy way… or grab and pull on the top of a chair with each arm for some resistance.]

For your body’s good, keep body parts movin’ so you don’t hear hard snap, crackle, pop sounds that mean you’re really tight and need mooo-re stretching in those areas.

To silence crunchy sounds if you’ve experienced those, I always start off by thinking about what body parts feel tension without movement …and then move and wiggle around a little to see what feels good.

Your body is intuitive for you. And some people’s muscles are more stretchy, so don’t compare yourself to what others can do.

And if it feels good to you, then it’s doing you good!

And from there… I figure out what needs to happen. If you’ve been doing yoga for a while or know various yoga poses, then you can think of specific poses. But if you can’t, then you can either follow the poses prescribed or flow poses like I’m giving here.

Or just make up your own. Stretching doesn’t always have to have a name, but most standing, sitting, and laying down on front or back poses do have a name.

And here are a few more office chair moves that you can for chest and shoulder openers:

Have prayer hands behind your back like in Camel pose I mentioned last time about travel yoga poses you can take with you.

And in the spirit of chair yoga, another great one is having raised Cactus arms to your sides. You raise your arms to your sides like Airplane arms and then bend them so they’re in an “L” shape beside your shoulders (palms facing forward).

You may be thinking you’re not really doing anything good to your body if you’re in a chair and not doing active poses on a mat, but any movement that takes your weight off your body in places and spaces carrying your own body weight helps your body.

…That’s one reason we sleep laying down and not actively seated where tension is added to the body so it can rest-reset-restore.

So yes, just sitting is work for your body! Tell that to your boss 😉

Away From Office Chair Yoga Poses

And away from your chair, you get up, you can stop and do a Mountain, Tree, and Chair pose (I call it “the invisible chair” without a chair)… always good for any prolonged sitting activity.

You could try a creative Mountain-Tree-Chair pose variation. I made this one up where I fold my leg on top of my opposite thigh, bend down in an invisible chair pose and raise my arms to the ceiling.

This does a world of good for your entire body and you can do this while you’re watching television and transform into a one-of-a-kind chair if you want to get off the couch potato pose. 🥔

And at the end of the long day, when you get yourself to a yoga mat, a great neck reversing restoring pose is laying down in Fish pose.

Lay face up on your mat with your elbows lifting most of your back up to your head off the mat. And then let your neck gently hang like a rag on a laundry line, so that you’re looking upside down at the opposite side of the room.

This takes the weight and pressure off your neck.

Then take a rest pose moment.

And when you feel ready, raise up into your Bridge pose… and when you come back down onto your mat, next time go for the high-energy arms Wheel pose, that’s amazing for stretching your back and giving you a burst of energy. You might be surprised at how high you can go, and freeing it feels to let your head and hair hang down!

In Wheel pose, I think of a Ferris wheel and how grand and controlled they look. This is the Liverpool one on the pier. Remember I mentioned I would share a ‘lil yoga inspiration.

The view from above ferris wheels is different from that below. And you can end your day on a high note even if it was spent in an office chair all day. 🎡

Sphinx Yoga Pose and Travel Poses You Need

Sphinx yoga pose is one that may remind you of traveling to foreign lands. And if you’ve been traveling in a car, plane, or train, your body needs a-lotta stretching. So doing travel yoga can save you! While traveling, you’re doing a lot of sitting.

And, standing and stretching your leg muscles at every opportunity helps you to re-energize and gets your circulation flowing. Like purposeful breathing, we need reminders.

For starters, you can do a standing Mountain pose and take it to a Tree pose when given a standing opportunity.

Btw... did you ever see a photo of my favorite Tree? It seems to withstand the seasons and looks so billowy relaxed.

My Tree is not nearly as big.

So anyway, from metaphoric Tree pose, you can take your movements a step further with the travel yoga tips and suggestions below.

And then when you can get to a mat, work on yoga poses to release weight from your precious back that carries your shoulders and head that weigh more than a small free weight.

Last time, I mentioned Plow pose that you can do instead of storing special back and fitness equipment you don’t use often. You can use just use your body equipment and weight that you carry everywhere and that takes up no space. How convenient!

When you’re ready, you would just lay down on your mat, look up at the ceiling without moving your head or neck, and then gently throw your legs backward in the air. You can even do this on a towel in your hotel room on the floor, but I wouldn’t recommend the bed for this one as you want a hard bottom surface.

In this take-with-you travel yoga pose, you can use your arms to guide your pose. You may even be able to get your toes to touch the floor behind your head if you’ve practiced this enough.

This pose helps to restore and correct back posture. I did this when I was moving some boxes around and after getting in the pose, was feeling brand new a day later.

…You just gotta love that!

So here are some other travel poses worth taking with you 😉

Sphinx yoga vs. Cobra vs. Upward Facing Dog

Sphinx yoga pose is a good way to flex your back. With your front on the mat, you bend your elbows and stretch your arms extended forward. I think of regal lion statues you may have seen when you’re entering the city gates.

From there, you can do non-traditional variations with your arms/elbows, like when a dog stretches out… Or straight up arms like in Cat pose, or a cat when they’re afraid or trying to appear bigger than they are. …whatever feels good to you!

And from there you can go into Cobra pose which is slightly similar to Sphinx yoga, but is more of a chest opener… that we say a lot in yoga. Hands sit back by your torso side and then you lift up from the mat. You can start in a Baby Cobra barely lifted off the floor. This is Great for back and arms!

Cobra and Sphinx yoga poses can take us back to another time in memory mindfulness.

And then take it into Upward Facing Dog that’s one step more active than the other two similar pose variations. You lift your body off the floor with active arms and feet.

In yoga, for these poses, we like to keep the tops of our feet on the mat (different than like a push-up where your toes curl off the floor).

So, using these 3 travel yoga poses, you can pinpoint and relieve different tension spots on your spine and arm muscles that need your attention on travel (especially where you’re less on guard with all your movements in new places).

Give ‘em all a try and some yoga love to your body if you have the time.

In between, Downward Dog is a good flow transition pose. But, another one you can get into is a neutral Table pose with your knees bent and resting on the mat along with your two faced-down palms on the mat.

You can make your Table “active,” by reaching your arm back, and grabbing one of your opposite ankles (and then alternating sides).

This gives you a nice stretch in your back. And you can do these after your Cat-Cows also.

…See how easy it is to create your own flow yoga sessions!?

There’s a pose you can strike to get to the smallest muscle tightness you feel, even if you can’t think of the yoga name.

And, actually your body doesn’t care if the pose has a known yoga name or not, as long as you’re hittin’ the right spot in the right way!

If you’re looking for other suggestions for your legs and back, you can go back to your Bow pose, Pigeon, Bridge, and Happy Baby poses that I recommended last time for cooks and bakers.

And if you really wanna keep doing flow travel yoga poses, Camel pose is an easy one, that’s another good back stretching pose. You’ll look like an “L” shape or be in 90-degrees.

Your knees and front legs are on the floor and your torso is 90 degrees from your legs. Your lower legs are behind you and your thighs are straight up.

If you have a sensitive back or spine (that’s not as flexible) and a long torso, a yoga block helps.

Or instead of reaching your hands back to your ankles, you can put your hands together in Prayer pose ( fingers touch to form an upside down “V”) behind your mid-back, or reach as far as you can down your back or legs without invoking any strain.

That’s what I do because I have a Vata long torso and even longer legs.

…I became aware of this in Dolphin pose in a class one day, when that was a tricky one for me. And that brings me to the question that so many people have…

People ask all the time: what if I can’t do certain yoga poses like I’ve seen others do (or mine doesn’t look like what I have seen others look like)?

First, you can do any pose you want to do, so be encouraged! You just need to find the pose position using your balance and flexibility that works for your body.

For example, the common Downward Dog pose for some people will be a higher, greater incline upside down “V,” and for others, it won’t be as sharp with a pointed top.

Everyone’s “V” looks different.

Yoga doesn’t have to be rigid, or about looking a certain way. You’re working to be more flexible!

It’s about appreciating your body and your individuality. You get to learn more abou your you-niqueness and what makes you, You!

…Just another point to love about yoga.

And, yoga is a journey that you can take with you everywhere!