A reason to unroll that yoga mat first thing

Photo by Martin Louis

This morning I’ve risen a little earlier so I can do a longer meditation practice. I also usually follow that with a half hour of yoga – one of the benefits of working from home is I am able to do this most days. However, I sometimes wonder if I should skip the yoga – do it later in the day – so I can get on with other “important” things. I was thinking that today, then I read this on the Ekhart Yoga website I go to for my online classes:

“Giving yourself an extra hour or half an hour in the mornings to wake up and practice will allow your nervous system to begin the day in a far more relaxed state. Our levels of cortisol (the stress hormone) are already high in the mornings in order to give us the boost we need to wake up. If this level of cortisol is quickly increased with added stress however, we’ve set ourselves up for an equally stressful day. Making the practice of yoga a habit each morning allows the body to get into the habit of switching off the sympathetic ‘fight or flight’ stress response, and instead able to finally tap into the healing benefits of the parasympathetic nervous system – increasing the health of both body and mind immensely. “