Day One

Highly motivated, I managed to convince my 16 year old "too cool for yoga" sister to join me for some stretching and relaxing yoga that tones and firms your bum. We started with some basic seated stretching exercises to warm up our muscles for the first sequences.

This is how it went:
*Mountain pose;
*tree pose;
*triangle pose;
*side angle;
*warrior Iⅈ
*and pyramid pose
(repeat for both legs, we did it only once but alone, I would probably repeat the sequence twice for both legs.)
*Shoulder stance
(we held it for thirty seconds twice but if you have ever taken a Jivamukti class, you know you can hold it much longer)
*plough pose
(we went into plough pose on our way down from each shoulder stance staying their for only one breath)

From there, we did some gentle stretches lying on our backs and a couple bridge poses (as a counter pose to plough pose) and ended our practice with a 5 min
*savasana (corpse pose).

Over all, we did 25min of yoga. We could've held the various poses longer and done more repetitions but for a first time it was pretty good.

The sequence is basic and enjoyable. I have a hard time with pyramid pose and try to avoid it (terrible I know) but if I do it everyday for a week or even two, as suggested by Iyengar, I should improve considerably and maybe just maybe I won't shudder with dread when it comes up during my next yoga class.

I've used English words for the asanas but one in this first sequence, I'll slowly and gradually switch to the Sanskrit.

What kind of warm up/cool down exercises do you do?

Namaste


[Picture credit yogayoungsters.com]
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