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Good Morning, Practice

 

A daily morning practice can be daunting at first, but exploring the ways we can bring freshness to routine is a vast playground.

In this web series, Morning Practice, join me in getting out of bed, onto the mat and into the body. We’ll progress step-by-step through a morning practice that is awakening and invigorating.

For this first episode, we start with mantra and move on to surya namaskar A with prostration.

Mantra is one of my preferred ways to start the day. Using malas, I select a mantra (or two or three) for the day and recite each one 108 times. While the mantras I tend to use are mostly sanskrit and passed on through my teachers, the most potent aspect of reciting them out loud or to myself is that I begin to invoke and shape my perspective for the day ahead. A mantra can be as simple as love or smile and as “complicated” as Tat Twam Asi.

What follows is a version of surya namaskar A with prostration. This comes from my teacher, Janet Stone. While surya namaskar A is a comprehensive and effective way of opening and stretching the physical, energetic and subtle bodies, the addition of a prostration (lying face down on the floor, arms outstretched) is a way of setting down any baggage from the night before and offering fully to the mantra invoked. Or possibly, simply letting go of it all.

 

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Kevin Yee-ChanGood Morning, Practice

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