A 10-minute yoga routine for beginners and advanced yogis could power up your morning. If you want to build full-body strength, boost flexibility and increase mobility without weights a short yoga workout could help.
We turned to Alo Moves for a gentle power flow yoga routine to energize your body in the morning, or you could gently wind down your body before bedtime. Regardless, we recommend using one of the best yoga mats for home workouts and a yoga block to support your body if you have limited flexibility.
Yoga is a brilliant way to engage your whole body, increase mind-body awareness and mindfulness and reduce stress and anxiety. This particular routine could also activate your core muscles, increasing torso strength, balance and stability.
What is the 10-minute yoga routine by Alo Moves?
Christa Janine leads the routine, and although the yoga routine is short, you’ll still access the many benefits of a yoga practice. Besides, “exercise snacking” (fitting in small bouts of exercise throughout the day) is having a bit of a moment right now.
There are a few things I wish I had known as a yoga beginner, and one of them is the importance of focusing on your breath. Despite the short amount of time spent on your mat for this power yoga routine, bring awareness to your inhale and exhale as Janine guides you through this flow, always coming back to your breath if your mind wanders.
It’s worth a reminder that while the mental and emotional benefits of yoga — feeling calmer and less anxious, for example — can be instantaneous for people, you’ll need to develop a consistent yoga practice to benefit from the physical benefits of yoga. These include like building stronger muscles, core stability or improving balance and flexibility; this doesn’t happen from a one-off 10-minute yoga workout. A strong mindfulness practice can also be built over time.
Beginners can use this as a standalone routine to ease into a regular yoga practice or add it to an existing exercise routine to support other types of physical exercise. We also recommend using it as a gentle warm-up or cool-down if you have a more advanced practice.
The 10-minute yoga routine starts with a downward-facing dog, allowing you to bring attention to your breath while easing into any tight muscle groups. From here, Janine ramps up the pace slightly to take you through a series of popular yoga poses that target the entire body, and we particularly love the attention to the hamstrings and hips.
If you need extra intensity, Janine gives you the option to cycle through two more rounds of chaturanga (flow) to challenge your upper body strength and elevate the heart rate before moving on with her into a round of abs. Practice gentle core engagement throughout, bracing your stomach and avoiding holding your breath as you work through hollow rock, flutter kicks and heel touches, targeting the abs, deep stabilizing muscles and obliques.
Janine recommends repeating the power flow routine another time through, including the core finisher, for a full 10-minute workout. Or you can stick to the routine as given if you’re new to yoga. For anyone unfamiliar with breathing techniques, we recommend practicing a short breathing routine to help bring calmness and awareness to your body first.
