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Morning Yoga Practice: Āsanas and Prāṇāyāma

Morning yoga practice integrates āsanas and prāṇāyāma to awaken the body.

Begin with deep inhalation and exhalation, raising the upper body from the floor to stretch the neck and activate abdominal muscles. Shoulder stretches release tension in the shoulder girdle, preparing for later activity. In catuṣ pādāsana, legs stretch while the body warms, using full lung capacity. Kaṭi Cakrāsana follows with wide-legged lateral bending, keeping spine, shoulders, and hands aligned with the breath. Standing relaxation lets circulation flow through legs, arms, and head. Gūṇamānāsana is practiced seated, twisting side to side with both sitting bones grounded. Each twist squeezes the spine, releasing stale blood so fresh blood can enter upon relaxation. Aśvasan Chalana Āsana targets abdominal muscles through controlled leg movements; a lighter variation is for those with menstruation. After lying in Ānandāsana, observe any remaining tension and release it. Breath awareness deepens by following inhalation from navel to throat and exhalation from throat to navel. Leg stretches precede the meditation posture, ensuring comfort with pillows or blankets. Hands rest in chin mudrā, eyes close, and the body becomes still. Three Oms are chanted, directing circulation to the head, then the practice gently concludes.

“So, when we do stretching, it’s like we take a sponge and squeeze it, and all the water comes out. Then, when you relax it, new water can come in.”

“With inhalation, we just follow the flow of our breath from the navel to the throat, and with exhalation, from the throat to the navel.”

Filming location: Umag, Croatia

Now, once more, take a deep breath in and out. One deep inhalation, exhalation, and put your hands behind your head, cross your fingers. So put your hands behind your back and interlock your fingers. We will raise the upper part of the body from the floor. Inhale while lying down, and with an exhalation, raise up your body. Exhale, go up, keep the position, and inhale down. Exhale and hold the position. We feel the stretching of the neck, and we feel how the muscles are active in this position. And what is very nice for us is how the lower part of the body stretches on the floor. So feel the neck muscles stretching, and feel how the abdominal muscles are keeping you in the position. And with an inhalation, go down. With the inhale, we go down and put our hands next to our body. A little deeper inhale and exhale, and slowly get up. First, we will stretch the upper part of the body, the shoulders, and we will be able to prepare for today’s afternoon activity, swimming. We put our hands around the floor, and we try to keep the position of the hips firm. So when we take the position, I will just show you, we feel the position is firm, the hands are flat. We spread the shoulder blades, and in that way, when we perform the position, we very gently massage the upper part of the body, the shoulders, and we remove all tension, you see. Čvrsto, idemo, all together. So feel the position firm, feel the elbows at the height of your shoulders, and we’ll go in front with inhalation. You stretch front, full inhalation, and exhalation back. Udīśa, potpuno. Inhalation, stretch, and exhalation, and 5, 5. Inhalation and exhalation, stay in this position, stay in this position, and on the other side, and on the other side... Dip it, and put down your hands. A little deeper inhalation and exhalation. Feel your shoulders, your neck muscles. It’s very good to release tension in that area. In this way, we can massage ourselves very nicely. A little more with the shoulders. So, breathe in and breathe out. So, a little bit more, massaging our shoulders. Just feel unity with the movement and breath. Inhalation, we go behind, and exhalation down. Three, four, and five. Five. On the other side: one, two, three, four, and five. And relax. So, in the morning we’ll practice the second level and we’ll start with catuṣ pādāsana. So, just feel the stretching of your legs and breathe. Your arms and back are straight. Just try to feel the stomach and try to inhale and exhale. So, a little bit longer in this position, you can feel the effects that we are becoming very hot. We are becoming very warm in this position, and inhalation goes up and exhalation stays the same. Put down our hands, deep inhalation, exhalation. And the second time, inhale, stretch up, and on exhalation, you go down, and be completely aware of breathing. Just a little deeper exhale, and relax in the position. So try to inhale a little bit deeper, to use the full capacity of the lungs, not just the upper part of our lungs, but the whole breath. And we go up. Inhalation, and exhalation, put the hands down. And three. Udīśe, and exhalation. And Udīśe, let’s go up. Inhalation, we go up. Stretch up, and exhalation, put the hands down. And exhalation, let’s lower our arms, spread our legs to the width of our hips, relax our shoulders, close our eyes, and relax in a standing position. Put your feet a little bit apart and just relax in the standing position. So we can feel nice circulation in our legs, in our arms, we can feel a little bit warm in our abdomen, and nice circulation in our head. And a little deep inhale, and with exhalation, just bend forward slowly, piece by piece, put down our body. Budišaj, idemo polako gore. Inhalation, we go up slowly. I izdisaj, se spustimo. Exhalation, we go down. Inhalation up, and for the third time, exhale, slowly go down. Exhale, slowly go up, slowly. And just stay with your eyes closed, and just stay with the closed eyes. Open your eyes. Kaṭi Cakrāsana, spread your legs a little bit more than the width of your hips, and we will do lateral stretching. Put your fingers on your hands, interlock your fingers, put the fingers down, and all the time look at our fingers. All the time look at our fingers. All the time look at our fingers.... So, we just stretch our hands up, stretch up completely, with inhalation stretch up completely, like a little bit somebody is pulling us up. From the hips, you go in front. So your body, your spine, your shoulders, and your hands are in one line. Look at your fingers. Inhale, we go to the left. Exhalation, middle. Exhalation, middle. Inhalation, up. Inhalation, we go up. And exhalation, izdisaj. Spustimo ruke. Inhale. Your back is straight. You go right. Desno udisaj. Izdisaj sredina. Exhalation in the middle. Inhalation, go up. Exhalation, stretch from the hips. We go to the other side. Inhalation, go up. Exhalation, stretch from the hips. We go to the other side. Exhalation, stretch from the hips. We go to the other side. We go right, inhalation; exhalation in the middle; inhalation, we go up, stretch up; and exhalation, put the hands down. Opustimo ruke malo, relax our hands a little, i treći ciklus, third round. Inhalation, exhalation, we go down. Stretch from the hips; you feel the whole body stretching in one line. We go right, exhalation in the middle, inhalation we go up. Stretch a little bit up, and exhalation, put the hands down. Relax the hands and lie in ānandāsana, lezimo o ānandāsana. And just feel the effects of these āsanas on our body. Feel the effects of the āsanas we practice on our body. In a standing position, we worked on stretching the shoulders and the shoulder girdle. We stretched our legs and did side bending. So we can feel the relaxation and circulation in our legs, knees, arms, and head. And again, a little deeper inhale and exhale, and slowly sit down with your legs stretched out. We will do Gūṇamānāsana, greetings to the earth. So sit in Daṇḍāsana, and let’s all go together. Inhale, raise your arms, and exhale. Gently lean back and to the left. Let’s try to keep as much of your sitting parts on the floor as possible. So try to leave both buttocks on the floor. And exhale. Inhale, we go up, and exhale, we put down our hands. Inhalation, we go up, and exhalation, we put down our hands. In the third round, on each side, we will stay a few inhalations and exhalations in the position. Go up, exhalation on your left, and just breathe normally. We go up with inhalation, and we go down with exhalation. And the other side. Inhalation, exhalation, and we try. And with every exhalation, try to deepen the position a little bit. With each inhalation, you go up; with each exhalation, put the hands down and just relax in Daṇḍāsana. Close your eyes, zatvorimo oči, možemo staviti ruke iza leđa, you can put your hands behind your back and just relax in this position. Feel your back, feel your spine, feel the warmth around your spine. Feel the warmth around your spine as you twist in your āsanas. Very nice, as if we took a sponge, pulled it out, and now fresh water, that is, fresh blood, can enter that part of the body. So, when we do stretching, it’s like we take a sponge and squeeze it, and all the water comes out. Then, when you relax it, new water can come in. So, just feel the spine. We will do one more āsana before Ānanda Āsana, so open your eyes, Aśvasan Chalana Āsana. So just get ready. In case of difficulty, menstruation, we don’t have to do this āsana, so we can do some kind of light version of massage with... Menstruation, with difficulty we won’t do massage, so I don’t know if there is a need for someone else. Do some āsana that is best for you. We will do three cycles ten times, so we’ll do three rounds, ten times each round. Try to feel that your back is straight when you practice your āsana. So you go a little bit behind, straight back, just stay a little bit, and then pull up your legs so they are at the shoulders, at the height of your eyes. So, we don’t try to do it like this or put our legs a little bit higher. You know what the right position is. The right position is where you use your abdominal muscles the most. So, we all know which is the right position, where we feel how our muscles work in the position. So, let’s do it together. One, inhalation, inhale and exhale, down. Two, and exhale. Three, and exhale. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, down, 9, down, down,... down. Don’t let yourself get activated now. So feel all the muscles. We feel all the muscles that are actually involved in the movement. So these are the ones that are telling us now. So I feel a little bit of tension in the thigh muscles, in the... Stomach muscles, lower part of our back, so with exhalation, just try to relax. Say this, just relax a little. And the second time, one, and exhale. Two, and exhale. Three, exhalation. Four, exhalation. Five, and exhale. Six, and exhale. Seven, and exhale. Eight, and exhale. Nine. And exhale, 10, and exhale, 11, and exhale, 12, and exhale, 13, and exhale, 14, and exhale, 15, and exhale, 16, and exhale, 17, and exhale, 18, and exhale, 19, and exhale, 20, and exhale, 21, and exhale, 21, and exhale, 22, and exhale, 22, and exhale. Twenty-three, and exhale. Twenty-three, and exhale. Twenty-four, and exhale. Twenty-four. Sixth exhalation. Sixth, exhale. Seventh, inhale. Exhale. Eighth, exhale. Nine, exhale. And ten. Exhale. Relax a little bit on your legs. We hold the position and lower them down. We usually like to throw them out, and that’s how we do the āsanas. So we try, it’s like, of course, we always cheat at school a little bit. So we try to cheat in āsanas. So we try to avoid a little bit. So we lift our legs up and pull them down immediately. So just try to feel that you are controlling the movement up and down. Let’s go. One, exhalation. Two, down. Three, breathe. Exhalation. Four, exhalation. Five. Because of these āsanas, there is Madhurī Mudrā. We laugh a little, so we can do Madhurī Mudrā. It won’t hurt us. Exhalation. Six, seven, eight, nine, and once more, ten. Put the legs down and lie in Ānandās. Ijemo dah. So if we feel more tension in the lower part of our back, we can push out our stomach a little bit more, so the lower part of our back stretches on the floor. And if you feel extra tension in the lower part, you can always do Pavan Muktāsana individually. So if somewhere in the body you still feel tension, with inhalation you feel that part, and with exhalation just relax. With inhalation, we just follow the flow of our breath from the navel to the throat, and with exhalation, from the throat to the navel. So I’m aware that I’m breathing, following the breath with exhalation, and relaxing with inhalation and with every exhalation. I sad polako osjetimo ponovo tijelo, feel again the body, a little bit move the fingers, toes, and with the next exhalation stretch the hands above the body. Completely stretch. Samo se istegnemo potpuno, i izdise vratimo ruke pori tijela, protrljamo dlanove, zagrimo ih, i sjednemo. And sit up. Before prāṇāyāma, we will just do a little bit of exercise for our legs, so prije prāṇāyāme malo ćemo samo razgibat noge. Daṇḍāsana, isplužimo noge. And I pull the leg up, we rest the right foot on the left thigh, and we stretch a few times, and put the feet together, and sit up, and sit up,... and leg up on the thigh and gently push the knee down. You don’t feel any pain in the knee, just a little bit. Udisaj, idemo gore, pogled u prste ruku, and exhalation we go down. Inhalation, we go up, and exhalation, put down the hand. Stretch the leg, and butterfly. When we do butterfly, when we do leptir, we try to push forward as much as possible. So we try to keep our back straight and push the pelvis a little bit up. So, we usually do it that way, we bend over our legs, and then we get this, like this. So, we try to stretch. Try to keep your back straight, not round, like this. Stretch a little bit more. And we stretch forward. So, we’ll go down, and when we stretch forward, we pay special attention to our legs being straight. So, here we pay attention that our back is straight. So, if our back is round when we go down, we’ll do this. And we won’t do anything for our back or our hips, we’ll just put our head a little bit down, so we are not like depressed, we go. We stretch our back, we tighten our legs, and we go down long. Long after we tighten our legs. Here, someone is holding us by the head down. We enter, we go up, inhalation, we go up, and the second time, long. Someone is keeping our head and putting us down. Inhalation, we go up, and three, and three, we go down. Inhale, go up, and stretch your legs. Meditacija. So you can put a little bit of pillow or a blanket underneath you so you feel more relaxed in this position. If you are cold, cover yourself with a shawl so you can put a shawl on your body. Feel the position completely relaxed and comfortable. Third level. So, I’ll just repeat shortly. So if you’re sleeping in this position, you will have these two fingers here after the prāṇāyāma, so we’ll know you have been deeply thinking in the prāṇāyāma. Close your eyes, hands in chin mudrā, ruke su chin mudrī, zatvorimo oči i samo se opustimo. So feel that your legs are relaxed, your spine is straight, your stomach is completely relaxed, your elbows and shoulders are relaxed, and your jaw is relaxed and parallel to the ground. And just follow your breath. So we’ll sing "Om" three times. Udīśaj, inhalation, Om. Eyes and stretch in front, head goes to the floor. Feel the circulation going to your head, feel the back stretching. Palms are on the floor, and slowly go back. Stretch your legs. So with this, we finish our morning program. With this, we end the morning program. The sun has risen. Enjoy your breakfast and listen to the words in the Kīrtana, whether you are going for a bath or to the Satsaṅg here.

This text is transcribed and grammar corrected by AI. If in doubt what was actually said in the recording, use the transcript to double click the desired cue. This will position the recording in most cases just before the sentence is uttered.

The text contains hyperlinks in bold to three authoritative books on yoga, written by humans, to clarify the context of the lecture:

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