I’m a big warm-up person. I like to ease into yoga practice - I find it helps get the ol’ mind focused. It also allows me to ‘hear’ what’s going on my body rather than just jump into a bunch of poses. And of course when I’m teaching I always start the session with warm-ups, because it helps people avoid overdoing it.

I’ve been playing around with a Childs Pose warm-up that goes like this:

- Get into Childs pose for a few good Ocean breaths. Really let your torso and hips sink into it with each exhale.

- Lift your head, slide both hands over to one side of the mat, let your forehead rest again stretching the opposite side of your torso. Change sides.

- Bend your arm and bring your upper arm to the mat under your chest (parallel to the top of the mat) so it’s supporting your torso. Stretch your other arm (straight) up to toward the ceiling bringing a twist to your upper back. Change sides. Alternate - You can also repeat this one with your breath - inhaling the arm up, exhale down and inhale the other arm up.

- Come back into Childs Pose but widen your knees, to the outer edges of your mat. Then sink even deeper into the pose. You can also slowly sway your hips from left to right, working into those hip joints. If you sway far enough your forehead ’sways’ too and that feels really calming.

- To come back to sitting, walk your hands back towards you and roll your spine, one vertibrae at a time, to vertical, bring your chin up last.

From here you can tuck your toes under and go into a Ragdoll forward bend and then again, roll your way up to standing.

It’s a pretty solid warm-up that helps gets you centered, gets your spine working in various directions and warms up your hips a bit too. I hope you’ll give it a try.