Practicing yoga has indeed become one of the most advantageous fitness activities. Although, with everyday’s life demands and our time being taken away with work or school, it gets challenging to squeeze in a yoga session. Thankfully, there are a number of yoga poses you can do everyday and anywhere that are helpful and beneficial to your body.

We, at 8list, asked Jasmine, a yoga enthusiast, to demonstrate 8 yoga moves one can easily do to help energize your day or that can even do as part of your workout. Here are 8 poses you can do:

1. Cat-Cow

The cat-cow is the perfect pose to do as soon as you wake up. The pose stretches the muscles of your hips, back, abdomen, chest, and lungs. Not to mention that this pose increases flexibility to your neck, shoulders, and spine.

Mechanics:

1. Arch your spine up and look down at your thighs.
2. Take a breath, bring your spine back to neutral and then look up while dropping your belly.
3. Repeat this four times.

2. Downward-facing dog (Adho mukha śvānāsana)

Another great way to wake up is by doing the downward-facing dog pose as this stretches out the shoulders, hamstrings, calves, arches, and arms. This pose is known to calm the brains and relieve stress as an energizer stretch to kick off your day.

Mechanics:

1. Start on all four with a flat neutral spine.
2. From there, tuck your toes, lift your hips, bring your ears between your arms and look down at your thighs.
3. Bring your heels toward the ground, and pedal your feet to wake up your hamstrings and calves.
4. Hold this for three breaths before coming back down to your hands and knees.

3. Tree Pose and the extending tree pose

Considered as one of the most basic yoga poses, the tree pose stretches the entire body from head to toe. Not only does this pose enhance the flexibility of legs, back, and chest muscles, but also increases stamina, concentration, and immunity. The three pose calms and relaxes the central nervous system, cures rheumatic pain and treats body numbness.

Mechanics:

1. Stand erect. Keep the feet together.
2. Fold the right leg and placed it at the top of left thighs with the toes of right leg should be pointed downwards.
3. Extend your arms above your head.
4. Inhale and try to make Namaskar mudra with your palms.
5. Balance the pose as long as you can because balancing is utmost important in Tree pose.
6. Repeat the same with left leg.

4.Triangle pose

The triangle pose stretches and strengthens the core and legs and is the perfect pose if you have a long full day of walking. If done properly, the triangle pose helps strengthen legs, knees, ankles, abdominals, obliques, and the back. It relieves stress and helps alleviate back pain. This pose can also help if you’re experiencing diarrhea, eye strain, low and high blood pressure and heart conditions.

Mechanics

1. Starting from standing mountain pose, turn sideways on your mat.
2. Walk or jump your feet apart approximately the length of one of your legs–this usually works out to be about three or four feet apart.
3. Look down at your feet, your left big toe should line up exactly with your right big toe to ensure your hips are in perfect alignment.

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