Short targeted yoga practice for energetic boost if you are feeling depleted, disconnected or jaded
9How do you feel when you wake up in the morning? Do you feel energized and ready to start your day, or do you feel tired and depleted? Every day we need sufficient fuel to tackle the challenges of the day, and too often we fail to recharge our batteries fully with good activities, good food, good sleep and good experiences. If this pattern goes on for a while, it can become a chronic problem, and any one yoga practice is not going to fix it. You would need to make serious lifestyle changes. But if this tiredness is an occasional thing, you can definitely deal with it through your yoga practice.
In yoga we use the term Brhmana to describe a type of practice that is meant to build your energy up. The goal of a Brhmana practice is to cultivate and expand your energy, not simply crank it up. This makes it qualitatively different from, let’s say, a cup of coffee. Caffeine might help you perk up in the morning, but it is usually followed by an energetic dip once it wears off. So you need another fix in the afternoon to avoid an afternoon slump. Often a few quick rounds of Sun Salutations in the morning have the same effect. They might give you an energetic spike, but then it quickly dissipates. But if you do the same few Sun Salutations while deepening your breath and follow them up with a Brhmana pranayama technique, you have a much better chance of making a lasting impact on your energy. Breathwork is essential for energy management.
This 20-minute yoga practice is designed to give you an energetic boost if you feel tired, depleted or frazzled. You can do it in the morning or at any point during the day; however, please do not do it too close to bedtime. The entire practice is focused on expanding and deepening your inhalation, which creates the sense of spaciousness and helps build your energy up. It follows the template for a short yoga practice design for energy management that we outlined last week. Give it a try and let me know how it feels!
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We sure appreciate your help in keeping us centered. Have a nice autumn day
🙂 Thank you! I hope you are having a lovely day, too!
great soft energizer, I´ve been practicing and really boost your energy in a soft centered way.Thanks.
Super! That was exactly my intention. Glad to hear it worked that way for you.
Hi Olga, thank you for the excellent practice! I have one question. What is the reason for filling up the lungs top down? It feels natural to me to inhale from the belly and up and was having a hard time breathing from the top part of the chest first. Thank you!
Hi! Thank you for your excellent question. In my tradition we say that you can choose to breathe any way you like (from top down, from the bottom to the top, from the center outwards), as long as you have a reason for it. Whichever way you decide to breathe, it’s the muscular action you are controlling, not the movement of air itself. Chest breathing is generally more uplifting and energizing, while belly breathing is usually more grounding. Since we were working on building the energy up, I chose to emphasize chest breathing. There are other reasons to breathe like that, also. Here is an article I wrote about it a while back – I hope you find it useful!
Thank you Olga! Your answer was spot on, and the article was full of information I was looking for. I appreciate your knowledge and the ability to communicate that in the very easy to understand way. Thank you so much!!
I was felling anxiety and after the practice I felt grounded…it`s an strange thing for me using kapalabhati and the anuloma krama…thanks a lot
That’s great to hear! I am glad that I am introducing something different to your yoga repertoire! 🙂