10 Minute Yoga for Men- No Equipment, No Experience.

Hey, guys. Here is a gentle 10-minute morning yoga routine to help you ease into your day. This is truly beginner-friendly, so we're not going to do any crazy poses here. You don't have to be flexible. This is going to be very basic, straightforward movements. I'll walk you through the postures, the technique, modifications if you're new. By the end of this, you should be feeling more settled, more open through your body, better posture, and ready for your day. If you like this routine and my approach in general, and you'd like longer workouts and more structured programs, check out the Manfall Yoga app and members area. We're going to get started here on your back. And I have equipment, but we don't actually need any equipment for this routine, so don't worry about it. So we're going to start lying down on your back. Bring your right leg straight out in front of you. Try to seal off the space between your lower back and the ground. And then bring both hands to your left knee, and bring your left knee in toward the shoulder. So we're going to be tightening up the hip flexors, maybe engaging through the left abdominal wall a little bit as we're here, and stretching through the lower back. So it should feel like a gentle release. If it feels painful or uncomfortable, just don't pull the leg in as much. Try to make it so that your head is looking straight up here. If you spend a lot of time sitting, or you have an office job, or you just have overall bad posture, you might notice that you're kind of looking backwards behind you instead. That will fix with time as you improve your posture, but try to tuck the chin toward the throat. And if you want to, you can also put something underneath your head, like a pillow, or even a knee pad, like this, to relax the neck. And as we're here, we're just breathing slow and controlled in and out of your nose. So try to fill up through your belly as you inhale. And as you exhale, let all that air out through the nose. One more breath here, and then we'll go ahead and switch sides. So left leg comes straight out. Once again, try to pull your lower back into the ground, and then bring your right knee in toward your right shoulder. Grab the right knee with both hands. Fingers can be interlaced. Try to keep your chest and your neck relaxed on the ground here. Again, if it helps, you can put a knee pad or a pillow or something underneath your head. That's going to help you look straight up at the ceiling instead of, again, if you have bad posture right now and it's not better yet, you might end up looking up behind you without a little bit of support there. Now, with the body, we want to be working on body awareness here. So I want you to kind of do a body scan. So check in with your toes on your left foot. Make sure that your thighs are somewhat engaged. So just light muscle engagement there. Lower back kind of pulling into the ground. So the abdominal wall starting to get engaged. And then pulling the right knee in toward the shoulder. Not in a way that overly stretches the low back. So it shouldn't feel painful. You don't want to feel uncomfortable. But just kind of a nice little release. And then coming back to the breathing. Slow and controlled in and out of the nose. And if this seems like a lot for a beginner, that's normal. It can feel overwhelming managing both proper technique and focus on your breath at the same time. This is just something that gets better with practice. So try to do this consistently three times per week is good to aim for. And you'll notice that it starts to click over time. Last breath here. All right. Then go ahead and bring your feet in toward your butt. Plant your feet maybe a foot in front of your hips. Bring your arms out to the side. Keep the lower back kind of lightly pulling into the ground. And then just go ahead and let your legs kind of fall over to the right. So your feet will stay where they are. You're going to come to the sides of your feet instead of planted on the bottoms of your feet. But just kind of let the knees go out to the right here. And as you're here, you should feel stretching through the outside of your left hip. You might feel some stretching through the lower back as well. Try to keep your shoulders on the ground. Tendency here is for this left shoulder to want to come up. So see if you can push that left shoulder to the ground. And take a big breath into your chest here. So as you inhale, think about expanding through your ribcage. And as you exhale, let your torso release into the ground. So big breath, push into the ribcage. Exhale, let it release into the ground. And this is just a really nice, easy twist stretch to help with stiffness in the low back. It's good for breathing, opening up the chest. When releasing some of that tightness in the chest, that can happen when we have poor posture or when we're stressed. And every time you can bring your focus back to your body or your breathing, that's a way for you to build mindfulness that translates into the day. So if you can do this in the morning, you should notice feeling kind of more focused throughout the day, even with just a few minutes of this. All right, legs back to the middle. Take another deep breath in, pull the lower back into the ground. And then ease your legs over to the left. Try to keep your right shoulder on the ground. Breathe, breathe slow and controlled in and out of your nose. And again, you should notice kind of some stretching here through the outer right hip. If it bothers you that you can't release your left leg all the way to the ground, you could put a block underneath that leg or you could put a pillow there. That way you can relax. But it's not required. Go with all of these postures in general. We just want to feel a little bit of a stretch. We just want to feel like we're going to kind of where our end range of motion is, where it's comfortable, and just playing around with that. It's not about forcing yourself into a position that you're not really ready for. You want to try and find that comfortable end range of motion. Focus on that slow, controlled breathing. And over time, you'll notice that your body starts to loosen up, starts to feel better. Cool thing is you should feel it at the end of just one routine. So, it doesn't take long to notice results. And then from here, we're going to move up into a child's pose. So, we're staying on the ground here. We're just going to flip over into a prone position on our chest. Go ahead and bring your knees wide. Bring your big toes to touch. And ease your hips back toward your heels. Now, if you have recent injuries to your knees or your knees are just tight, don't bring your knees as far back. You can bring your hips further forward. And then with the arms, you want to bring the arms at about shoulder-width distance. Make sure that you're making L's with your index fingers and your thumbs. So, right angles there, in line with the corners of the mats. And then release your forehead to the ground. Keep your arms straight. Try to find some awareness of the upper back muscles. So, if you had to push your arms into the ground and use the strength of your upper back to hold yourself here, all right, play around with finding that engagement in the upper back muscles. And then breathe in and out of your nose. Your forehead might not touch the mat here. That's normal if you're stiff through your upper body. It will get better over time. You can put a block underneath your head if you want to be able to relax your head on to something in the meantime. And then again, if you can, maybe the hips come further back toward the heels. I find a lot of beginners get hung up on wanting to get the hip further back. It really doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter in this pose. Worry about the shoulders. Worry about getting a good little release through the low back. But, you know, don't hurt your knees to get it. This is kind of like, kind of like what we would do with our hips in a squat position. Right? So, bringing the knees in toward the body. And the shoulders are what we would do if our arms were straight overhead and then getting pushed back a little bit more. So, getting some stretching through the shoulders. Big breaths in and out of the nose. In child's pose, it's easy to kind of feel your belly expanding toward your thighs as you inhale. So, that's a good way to practice your breath awareness as you're here. One more breath. Breathe in. Push your belly into your thighs. And then exhale. Okay. Moving into our first kind of somewhat standing pose. We're going to do a low lunge. So, I want you to bring your right leg forward. Knee over the ankle and the front foot. Kind of bringing your chest toward your thigh. That's how you want to line it up. And then bring the shoulders on top of the hips. You want to have your back toes tucked. We want the left leg engaged. So, squeezing the left thigh. Squeezing the left hip. And then easing the hips forward into a low lunge. You should feel a nice stretch through the left hip. But, also feeling strength through both legs. So, really pushing down through the feet. You can even flirt with kind of lifting that left knee up. Just to see what it would be like to hold yourself with strength. Then we're going to bring the arms up and into goal post arms. Squeeze your elbows back and add a little bit of a back bend here. So, this is a really good energy boosting pose. We're getting the chest open. We're getting the hips open. We're kind of doing the exact opposite of what we do when we sit in a chair. Or, you know, are driving or resting. This is a really good counter pose to help with posture. Help with opening up tight hips. Releasing stiffness in the back. One more breath here. And then go ahead and release. We'll switch sides. So, left leg forward, right leg back. Once again, knee over the ankle and the front foot. We want the legs strong. So, back toes are tucked. Push down through your left foot. Feel the strength of your left thigh as you hold yourself up here. Squeeze your right glute and your right thigh to help open up through the right hip. And then we're going to bring the arms into goal post arms once again. So, elbows level with the shoulders. Squeeze the elbows back so your chest is opening up. Lift your chest toward the ceiling. You can even look up at the ceiling as long as you feel secure through your neck. If you feel like the head is just falling backwards and it's really uncomfortable, don't do that, but keep some space between the tops of your shoulders and the back of your head and breathe. In and out of the nose here. Remember, not just a stretch, but also building strength. One more breath here. All right. And then one more pose. Let's go into it quickly. We're just going to go into a standing back bend, but really gentle. Okay. So, standing with your toes touching, heels an inch apart. Bring your arms up into a Y. Squeeze your arms back just a little bit. Lift your chest up toward the ceiling. Make your arms as straight and as tall as they can. Make sure that your back of your neck is long here. So, it helps to think pulling your chin toward your throat and then lengthening the back of the neck instead of just letting the head fall backwards. And do the best you can with breathing. When you're in a back bend, it is harder to breathe. So, do your best to breathe slowly in and out of your nose. Last 10 seconds. Make sure the legs are firm. So, squeeze your thighs. Drive your hips slightly forward, squeezing your glutes. Lift up a little bit taller and release. Okay. Hopefully now feeling a lot better, a lot more energetic, kind of ready for the day. So, started easy and built up to more intense. Again, this is very beginner friendly. Yes, still intense at times, but still something that beginners can manage. So, if you liked this workout, check out the other beginner workouts that I have here on the Mantle Yoga YouTube channel. We have, as of now, we have the most popular video for yoga for complete beginners. So, check out that whole series. It's great. Subscribe so you don't miss out on future videos. We put out a new one every week. Like the video if you found it useful. All you have to do is click the like button. And then comment if you have some questions or some feedback. If you're looking for more structured programs and longer workouts, you can follow, check out the Mantle Yoga app and members area. And that's what I got for you today, guys. So, thanks for watching. And if you want to check out one of those other complete beginners workouts I just talked about, go ahead and click over my shoulder here and get straight to it.