20 minute morning yoga

This is 20 minute morning yoga: fourteen items in a fixed order, done on a mat within an hour of waking, on an empty stomach. It is the fuller version of the ten minute morning routine, and it is written for the person who has done that one for a month or two and has ten more minutes to give it.

Twenty minutes is a genuinely different practice rather than the same one stretched. Ten minutes buys you a warm spine and a start to the day. Twenty buys you three things ten cannot: a hip opening position held long enough to matter, a standing sequence with two poses rather than one, and work for the back of the body, which is the half of you that sitting has weakened. It is also long enough to end in a real rest.

Who it is for: anybody comfortable getting down to the floor and up again, at any age. Level beginner, with the standing balance done at a wall. If you are coming back to movement after years away, read yoga for beginners over 40 first and take the whole thing at three quarters of the pace given here.

What you need: a mat, a folded blanket for the back knee in the lunge, a wall within reach, and twenty minutes before the household wakes up. What you do not need is flexibility, warmth, or any previous experience beyond knowing the order, which takes about four mornings to learn.

If you are already doing the ten minute routine, this is the part worth reading. The extra ten minutes is spent on four things and nothing else.

• Two minutes in the low lunge. Sixty seconds each side, which is the shortest hold from which most people notice any change in the front of the hip. Thirty seconds does very little. This is the single most valuable addition for anybody who sits for a living.
• Two minutes of a second standing pose. Virabhadrasana 2 after the triangle turns one standing shape into a short standing sequence, and it is the item that puts strength into the practice rather than only movement.
• Two minutes on the back of the body. Salabhasana plus a longer cobra. Almost every home routine on the internet is all forward folds and hip openers, and the back of the body is what sitting actually weakens.
• Three and a half minutes of finishing. A twist lying down, a proper child's pose after the back lifts, and two full minutes of stillness. Ten minute routines finish in thirty seconds and it is the thing people report missing.

The remaining half minute goes on the extra fifteen seconds of cat and cow and the extra thirty in downward dog. Nothing in the list is decorative and nothing was added to make the number reach twenty.

What the extra ten minutes does not buy you is more sweat. If your twenty minute practice is more breathless than your ten minute one, something has gone wrong with the pace rather than right with the effort.

The order runs seated, on all fours, standing, prone, and lying down, and it never goes back up once it has gone down. That is deliberate, and it is the thing most home routines get wrong.

The first three items warm the spine and the shoulders before any weight goes through the arms for long, and before any standing pose asks the legs for anything. A stiff back at six in the morning is not the same back it will be at seven, so the sequence spends three and a half minutes making that difference before it asks for anything.

The lunge is fourth rather than later because the hip flexors are what a night in bed has shortened, and because everything standing that follows is better with an open front hip. Then the fold and the arm raises are a half minute transition from the floor to standing, which people underestimate: standing straight up from all fours makes a fair number of people over fifty feel light headed.

The standing group is in the middle, where you are warmest and most alert. Balance goes last of the three because it is the one that fails when the legs are tired, and finding that out with a wall beside you is the point.

The back lifts come after the standing work rather than before it, because a warm back lifts more safely with less range, and they are immediately followed by Balasana, which is a counter position and not a rest. Then the twist, which unwinds everything the back lifts did, and then stillness. Nothing after minute sixteen asks anything of you, which is what allows the practice to end rather than just stop.

Print this or copy it onto a card and put it where you will trip over it, which is the same advice as for the ten minute version and for the same reason: at six in the morning the decision is the enemy, not the effort.

1. Sukhasana, 1 minute. Sit, twelve breaths, eyes soft.
2. Marjariasana, 2 minutes. Fifteen slow rounds of cat and cow.
3. Adho Mukha Svanasana, 90 seconds. Pedal thirty seconds, hold a minute, knees bent.
4. Ashwa Sanchalanasana, 2 minutes. One minute a side, back knee on a blanket.
5. Uttanasana, 30 seconds. Six breaths, knees soft, head heavy.
6. Urdhva Hastasana, 30 seconds. Five arm raises, up on the inhale.
7. Trikonasana, 2 minutes. One minute a side, hand to the shin.
8. Virabhadrasana 2, 2 minutes. One minute a side, hips level.
9. Vrikshasana, 90 seconds. Forty five seconds a side, at the wall.
10. Bhujangasana, 1 minute. Three lifts of twenty seconds, elbows in.
11. Salabhasana, 1 minute. Two lifts of twenty five seconds, small.
12. Balasana, 1 minute. Knees wide, forehead down, six breaths.
13. Supta Matsyendrasana, 90 seconds. Forty five seconds a side, shoulders down.
14. Savasana, 2 minutes 30. Palms up, nothing to do, get up on your side.

Three optional minutes, added after the savasana and never in the middle: nine rounds of anulom vilom sitting up. On a morning when twenty minutes is not available, do items 2, 3, 4, 7, 10 and 14 and you have the ten minute practice with the lunge kept in, which is the right six to keep.

A printable one page PDF of this plan is being prepared and is not linked yet. When it exists it will be a plain download rather than something behind a form.

Practise on an empty stomach, within an hour of waking, before anything else has happened. Water beforehand is fine and a small cup of something warm is fine. Food is not: there are two forward folds, two back lifts and a twist in here, and all three compress the abdomen.

The order of the first hour matters more than people expect. Wash your face, use the bathroom, drink some water, then practise. Do not look at your phone first, not because of anything spiritual but because a screen at 6am reliably eats the twenty minutes you were going to use.

If you take medication on waking, take it, wait the interval your doctor gave you, and then practise. If you have diabetes and use insulin, the timing of food and practice needs to be worked out with your doctor rather than from a page, and this is not a long enough session to need anything to eat during it.

Morning or evening is a question I get every week. Morning wins on consistency, because nothing has yet come up to displace it, and the traditional preference is for the early hours. Evening practice is not worse, it is only more often cancelled. If your mornings genuinely do not allow twenty minutes, do this practice in the evening at three quarters of the pace, or use the thirty minute evening sequence, which is built for that end of the day rather than adapted to it.

On the amount: the World Health Organization recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity a week for adults. Twenty minutes of this five mornings a week is 100 minutes and it is not all moderate intensity, so it is a large part of that figure and not the whole of it. A brisk twenty minute walk on top covers the rest, and I would rather you did both than lengthened this to forty.

Five specific things, all of which I correct in the hall most weeks.

• Do not do the back lifts before the standing work. A cold back bends less safely, and the order here exists for that reason. If you are short of time, cut an item, do not reorder them.
• Do not straighten the legs in the forward fold. Tight hamstrings plus straight knees equals a rounded lower back taking the load, which is how people give themselves a sore back doing something gentle.
• Do not press up with the arms in the cobra. It is a back muscle action. Keep the elbows bent and close and lift a third of what you think you can.
• Do not put the foot on the side of the knee in the tree. Ankle, calf or inner thigh. The knee is not a shelf.
• Do not stand straight up out of the fold. Come up slowly, every time. This one matters more with every decade.

Skip the practice, or replace it, in these cases. Any acute back injury, disc problem or sciatica flare, because there are folds and back lifts in it: read the back pain page and use the gentler sequence there. Uncontrolled high blood pressure, glaucoma or a recent eye operation, because the head goes below the heart three times. Pregnancy after the first trimester, because the prone positions do not work. Fever, an active infection or genuine exhaustion, where the practice for the day is rest.

Sharp pain anywhere, pins and needles down a limb, or soreness that is worse on the second morning than the first all mean stop and be looked at, by a doctor first.

If the floor is the problem. Take the whole practice to a chair. The chair yoga sequence is twenty five minutes and covers the same ground with nothing done on the floor, and it is a legitimate substitution rather than a lesser one.

To make it easier. Back knee down in the lunge, hands on a low stool in the forward fold, fingertips on a wall in the triangle, both hands on the wall in the tree, one lift instead of three in the cobra, and leave the Salabhasana out for the first fortnight. That version is about seventeen minutes and it is where most people over sixty should start.

To make it harder, and there is a right order for this. First lengthen the holds: ninety seconds a side in the lunge and the standing poses, which takes the practice to about twenty six minutes. Then add three rounds of the sun salutation between item three and item four, which makes it half an hour and adds the only genuinely aerobic element. Only after both of those would I add new postures, and by then you want a class rather than a page.

If you have twenty minutes but no floor space, keep items 1, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, which are all standing or seated, hold each for twice as long, and finish sitting rather than lying. That is a real practice and it fits beside a bed in a hotel room.

Five mornings a week for four weeks, from what students report and what I watch.

Week one is spent learning the order, and the practice will take twenty five minutes because you keep checking the list. That is normal and the list is there for exactly that reason.

Week two. The low lunge is the first thing to change, and it changes noticeably. People report standing up from a chair differently, which is the front of the hip rather than anything to do with the back.

Week three. The two standing poses stop being an effort and the balance starts to hold without the wall for the first thirty seconds. The back lifts still feel small, and they should.

Week four onwards. The morning itself is what has changed most, in the sense that the practice has stopped being a decision. Stiffness on waking is usually less, though it comes back after a bad night or a long drive, and it will do that for years. Nobody becomes flexible in a month, and anybody promising you that is not counting the same month you are.

What research supports and what it does not: a meta-analysis of randomised trials of yoga in older adults found improvements against inactive controls in balance, lower body flexibility, lower limb strength, sleep quality and mood, with moderate effect sizes. That is roughly what this routine is aiming at. It says nothing about weight, and neither will twenty minutes a morning on its own, which is set out plainly on the weight loss page.

Each item below says what the position is actually for in this sequence, which is not always what it is best known for. The full teaching on each is on its own pose page, linked from the table above.

1. Sukhasana, 1 minute

Not a stretch. Twelve breaths sitting still, so that the practice starts from a settled body rather than from momentum.

2. Marjariasana, 2 minutes

Fifteen rounds of cat and cow. The whole practice depends on this item, and it is the one to lengthen if you only ever lengthen one.

3. Adho Mukha Svanasana, 90 seconds

Shoulders and the backs of the legs, with the knees bent as much as they like. Pedal, then hold. Wrists complaining means come down and do it on the forearms.

4. Ashwa Sanchalanasana, 2 minutes

The front of the back hip, held for a full minute a side. The reason this routine exists rather than the ten minute one.

5. Uttanasana, 30 seconds

A transition rather than a pose here. Six breaths hanging, knees soft, to move from the floor to standing without a jolt.

6. Urdhva Hastasana, 30 seconds

Five arm raises to wake the shoulders up before they hold a triangle. Lengthen, do not lean.

7. Trikonasana, 2 minutes

The sides of the body and the outer hip. The chest turning towards the ceiling is the pose. The hand reaching the floor is not.

8. Virabhadrasana 2, 2 minutes

Leg strength, which is the thing a gentle morning routine is otherwise short of. One minute a side is enough to be honest work.

9. Vrikshasana, 90 seconds

Balance, at the wall, at the end of the standing group when the legs are tired. That is when balance is worth practising.

10. Bhujangasana, 1 minute

The muscles along the spine, in three short lifts rather than one long one. Small and repeated beats big and held.

11. Salabhasana, 1 minute

The back of the whole body, including the buttocks and the hamstrings. Two lifts of twenty five seconds and no ambition about height.

12. Balasana, 1 minute

The counter position to the two back lifts, taken immediately, not later. Knees wide so the belly has room.

13. Supta Matsyendrasana, 90 seconds

A lying twist to unwind the back lifts and settle the lower back. The weight of the legs does the work.

14. Savasana, 2 minutes 30

Two and a half minutes of nothing, which is what turns the previous eighteen into a practice rather than a set of exercises. Roll to one side to get up.