Best time of day to do Yoga

Transcript

hi I'm doctor Melissa West and today's question comes to us from Pam and she wants to know is there a better or worse time of day day to do yoga the most uncluttered time in my day is early morning from about 5:30 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. at that time of day however some more exertion full poses seem too extreme for example bow pose frog and that sitting between your heels one an upward facing dog doing yoga later in the day however does not work as well because the outside world intrudes and pretty soon it's 6:30 9:00 p.m. time to cook dinner 6:39 time to cook dinner my husband and I are in our mid 50s to mid 60's and perhaps younger practitioners don't have this problem well I'm 40 and I have that problem too so so I already did a blog post about when the best time today of day is to practice and so we'll link to that in the show notes but the short answer to that is whatever time of day works best for you so if the morning is the best time of day to practice for you then absolutely go for it and I tend to agree with you for the reasons you listed once your day gets going it's harder to get back to the motivation to do it if you it sounds terrible but if you get it out of the way the first thing in the morning then you've got your commitment to your practice in and it sets you up well for the rest of your day so if that 5:30 is seven o'clock am slot works well for you then great I do also find that in my body those bigger postures that you mentioned like bow pose upward facing dog that's sitting between your heels pose your body just hasn't been moving that much you've just gotten up from lying in a prone position all night for about eight hours hopefully and so it's stiffer and you haven't walked around and moved around yet so though for those more exertion full poses as you called them you do need to take it easier and honor your body just as you would in any yoga practice so pay attention to your edges and just go to the edge where you would normally in any practice so come to comfortable edge be in that edge and don't go any further so you can still do the poses but maybe just do half bow pose don't go into full bow pose for frog don't go as deep for sitting between your heels put a blanket there for upward facing dog try baby Cobra instead so that was a great question Pam thanks so much finding a great yoga class is becoming more costly and difficult now there's a better way to self improvement in the privacy of your own home visit dr. melissa west at melissa west comm and start getting free weekly online videos real yoga for real people