Ok…maybe this kitty isn’t the best yoga role model. But, what happens when you move your body to your yoga mat in front of the television?
This article will provide 5 yoga poses you can do and feel more relaxed and stretched in a good way without missing a beat from your favorite shows.
Remember when you were a kid, you didn’t care so much about what was happening in the world, your posture, and health, or what you’d be doing in 5 years?
In a similar care-free style, you probably loved to spread out on the floor. Laying on your back or front position, you were most likely either reading a book or watching television.
Most adults don’t spend time on the floor, but the average American household does spend 4 hours a day with the television on.
Sitting on the couch, we’re trained to turn on our passive mode that leads us to consume snacks (that can easily end up being couch potato chips). This has become our active downtime-past time and how our modern society relaxes at home (not having to check on the farm like our ancestors).
If you moved to a floor yoga mat while enjoying your daily television shows, you could perform yoga without stress or taking additional time out of your day (that wouldn’t usually happen on a couch).
You could smartly use your TV-watching time to not just accumulate time-kill hours but to “kill two birds with one stone” and feel better about yourself.
While this type of television floor yoga isn’t the mantra intentional kind, there are still amazing physical health benefits! You can also be moving aching joints and working on your strength, flexibility, and balance that keep your body moving and in shape.
Television and yoga are the perfect marriage for energy and movement where move is an active verb.
I believe you can change your health and wellness one habit and movement at a time, and yoga is one good way.
These are 5 mat poses that can mind-body benefit you…
(and should be relaxing and either face-up or down like in a massage session.)
Starting with face down (so you’re less likely to fall asleep ;), Bow Pose mainly stretches arms, legs, chest, and spine when you grab and hold onto your ankles. You should feel it in a good way! You may even forget you’re in the pose as you’re mesmerized by your screen and holding the pose just a little longer than you normally would without a television. That’s a bonus to your body (that’s always) keeping score, and you gain stretching points as you can feel tight-sore and pain relief immediately, and in the days to come.
Pigeon Pose stretches your torso, arms, tight hips, and legs. You can also reach some ordinarily hard-to-reach quad and buttock muscles in your largest intricately weaved muscle masses. One side is usually tighter than the other, and you can quickly discover which side needs more attention in this active all-encompassing body yoga pose that you can turn into a graceful swan (Swan Pose). Like the sleeping swan pose in Swan Lake.
Sphinx or a similar Cobra Pose can restore your tired neck and shoulders. We tend to add chronic damage to our necks as many of our repetitive and daily activities like computer work, cooking, and cleaning require us to look down. We can mindlessly forget about looking up, out to the horizon, or straight ahead, unless we have to.
When you’re on the floor with a yoga mat, you can restore your neck by looking up at the television and counteracting the head-down effect. This matters because your neck critically supports your bowling ball-heavy head that protects your brain and projects your important face to the world.
A bonus for being on the floor is, if you normally wear glasses for nearsightedness, you can lose your spectacles on your mat as you’re positioned closer to the television. You can see your shows in focused detail, in close-up view, and better ignore other mindless distractions.
You may even end up watching through commercials learning something new about the world instead of routinely flipping channels with the remote control.
After you’ve had enough of being on your belly, you can flip over.
Face up (with back) on mat, where you can get into an active Bridge Pose that arches your spine and releases shoulders in the restoring opposite direction from the daily drill of being hunched forward. The higher the bridge you can build and get safely into, the more your spine benefits as you release tension from your back and any brick-like shoulders you carry. Comfortably instead, you can use a foam yoga brick for support, placing best where your back meets your buttocks, to gain leverage in your efforts.
Then you can reward yourself in relaxing Happy Baby Pose. Babies smile and coo in this weightless-feeling pose, and when adults relax in this pose, all the stress from the day can melt away in this mindful moment. No joke! That does your mind and body a world of good as you forget life’s pains and worries. This is a great time to have brain fog.
If we take time out to do yoga the usual way without a television, we’re usually counting down the minutes and our minds are ready to move on to the next thing because that’s how our busy society is programmed to operate.
Your mind is likely to drift into ego-driven thoughts. Without a good distraction (like an engaging television show or laugh), our never-shutting-off awake brains are wired to actively process challenging thoughts when it could really use a joyful, welcomed break.
When you’re focused on television happenings and aware of how your body feels in easy yoga moves, you can be tied up with mindful peace that frees you in the moment.
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Previously Published on medium
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Photo credit: iStock