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Welcome back, everyone! I hope you are all doing well and are ready for some new techniques. Each week, I discuss the different flows that are involved with yoga and pilates. In this past post, I focused more on a cardio-based flow. This week will focus on some crucial factors for keeping up with a healthy lifestyle. First, I hope everyone has been practicing and becoming stronger each day. I also want everyone to know that yoga and pilates are great exercises, but getting different forms of movement in your day-to-day lives is also essential. In my life, I love going on runs and walks while also practicing yoga/pilates. You can involve yourself in plenty of activities to keep yourself moving! Since the first couple of weeks, I hope there have been drastic changes in how your body moves in daily activities. Yoga and pilates can help with lifting heavy things at work, posture, walking, sitting, etc. by now, each day should make you feel lighter on your feet! Now that you’ve been constantly on your health journey let's look at different ways you can benefit your daily life.

Drink water: Since you were a kid, you've been told to drink water. But now that you've gotten older is it still necessary? YES! Drinking water helps with many parts of your daily activities, including keeping you hydrated. When you're hydrated, you will feel better. One thing I've learned from others is to wake up and drink a glass of water immediately. This will help get your blood flowing and gives your body a good jump start to your day. Now, there are different amounts of water based on your weight, medication, etc. In my own experience, I tend to drink 8-10 "bottles" of water which indicates 16 ounces per bottle. Therefore I'm around 128 ounces of water. This intake may be a lot more than others or less. It depends on your body type. But in the end, it's essential to drink water every day, all day. Before a yoga/pilates class, consider drinking around three bottles ahead of time to make sure you are hydrated and ready for the exercise!

Eat healthily: This part of a healthy lifestyle is easier than you may seem. No matter what, eating unhealthy is OKAY! It's important to live your life and eat junk food—everything in moderation. I ensure I eat three meals daily, including carbs, cheese, meats, and veggies. And more than less, I love having dessert at the end of the night. As long as you feed your body fuel, you are on the right path to a healthy lifestyle. In the future, it will help you during your yoga/pilates flow. I've learned that eating an hour before is perfect for letting your food settle, just like jogging.

Sleep Getting a good night's rest is super super crucial while being active. I get around 8 hours a night to ensure I'm ready for the next day. Every person has a different sleep schedule, but it's essential to get on a cycle so you can endure your daily activities and get some form of exercise. With yoga/pilates, a good system is to do more of your cardio-based flows in the morning/afternoon and focus on stretching and slowing your heart rate at night. This way, you can prepare your body for a good night's sleep.

Hey Everyone! How are we doing today? It's been a couple of weeks since I last posted, so I'm hoping everyone has consistently practiced their stretches and exercises. Since my first post, all my followers should have a good amount of experience where you can practice independently. And hopefully, everyone has seen a difference in their body since the first week! It may not be that different, but you should be more toned in certain spots. These exercises and stretches are known to help lean out your muscles and make you fit. I hope everyone here is excited to start another round of activities! I make these posts to create a safe and simple environment for people to begin their pilates/yoga journey without spending a fortune at a studio. And if you want to move towards a studio class, go right ahead! There are plenty of places around the world where yoga classes are being held. In my journey, I've tried to go to lessons, which were beneficial, but I've learned I do my best alone in a room where I can practice without the feeling of others being around me. My hope for this blog is to have others like me come across it and know there is a way to bring yoga/pilates into your life without putting too much money and energy into it. The yoga community is fantastic and open to anyone who wants to join. Still, with everyone being so busy and nonstop, it can be difficult to include any type of exercise in our lives. It's essential to add a certain kind of exercise to your daily life, and yoga/pilates is one that can be quick and challenging. I remember when my sister showed me videos of yoga instructors, and we would exercise together, and it felt like something we bonded over. It can be the same for my followers; if you take these movements and show your family and friends, it could be beneficial to your relationships and their lives! Now, let's get to it. Today I want to focus more on a cardio-style flow where we will get our heart rates up! Make sure you have your mat rolled out, exercise clothes, and your hair up. Let's go! I'm going to include a picture that will show you guys what type of movements we will endure today. It will be provided below. Now, let's start standing on the back of our mat, and we will begin by doing our regular flow with the mountain pose moving into our plank, going into the downward facing dog, and back up to mountain pose. Let's repeat this flow three times. Now for our cardio, we will squat down, then up. Repeat this six times. You will feel the burn but don't stop just yet! After six times, we will move into some lunges. First, lunge down on your right leg, and back up. Then lunge down on your left leg, and back up. We will do four on each side. Great. Now let's do our mountain pose again and get into a plank position. Now, let's start doing some mountain climbers. Hold your body up and push your knees right, left, right, left for 20 seconds. Great! Now let's go back into a child's pose and rest your head on the mat. Repeat this cardio-packed FIVE times, and I promise you that you'll really feel the burn! I hope you guys enjoyed this different type of movement this week and next week, and we'll focus more on knee pilates that will get your glutes burning! Remember, practice your flow daily, stretch, and drink water, and I'll be posting soon!

Hey everyone, it's been a couple of weeks since I posted on here. I hope you guys have been doing the flow consistently these past weeks! And if you have, there's definitely a difference in your muscles/joints and overall how your body feels throughout day-to-day activities. If you haven't, it's okay! There's no rush on your journey, and the fact you're here on my page today means you want to change something in your health and fitness! The key to everyone's individual journey is to be consistent with these stretches and exercises! So that you will start to feel better overall and gain more strength using your own body weight. Looking back, we went through a lot of different poses, including a downward-facing dog, mountain pose, plank, three-legged dog, warrior 1, etc. These poses are critical essentials to yoga and pilates. The flow we had going the other time was beginner movements which will also be a part of today's lesson as well. Getting all the basics perfected first is essential, then moving into the more intermediate exercises. Now that we have a good base, let's begin with the other poses included in the photo I have down below. We are going to begin with the same flow as last time. First, get your mat out and roll it out. Make sure you have exercise clothes on, and your hair is back out of your face. Once you're ready, let's begin the flow. Start with the mountain pose, go down to the plank, move into a downward-facing dog, go back to the plank and gradually move back up to the mountain pose again. Do this flow a couple of times. Get your muscles warm and ready for some more poses! Okay, now that we have warmed our bodies up, we will go down to plank again but here, put your knees on the ground. From the picture below, we will go through the movements of the Cat and Cow, which are located at the bottom left. Cat and Cow are one of my favorite movements! It's great for spine relief and to get your back moving. If you see in the photo, you will arch your back inward and push your head up simultaneously. Then you will move your back up into a curve and hang your head low. Repeat this movement 4 to 5 times, and you will feel the stretch in the back of your neck and spine. After this movement, we will go into one of the most famous poses, the child pose! Here you will push your body to the back of the mat and lay your arms straight in front of you. This will feel good for your arms, back, and neck. Once we get into more intermediate exercises, we will end our flow with the child's pose. From the child pose, let's move our body to the front of the mat, where we will lower our chest to the ground. You will be lying on the floor, and from here, we will lift our arms and head up into a baby cobra pose. Once you have your balance in your arms, we will push up to a full-body cobra pose. Make sure your head is staring up at the ceiling. Perfect! Lay your body back down and push up into a plank. We will go through our flow again and back to the mountain pose. There we go, guys; you achieved the basic techniques of yoga/pilates! I'm so happy and proud of everyone who followed my lesson plan. Next week we will go into the more complicated poses. So homework for the next two weeks is to practice this flow every day or as much as possible. Your body will become more flexible, and it will be ready for the intermediate moves.

Hello guys! Welcome back to my page on pilates/yoga! Since you've been gone, I went through a lot prepping for the journey. Now we can start on the different kinds of pilates/yoga classes you can partake in. First, we must remember these exercises are all about strengthening your muscles while becoming more flexible. It's essential to take your time with these exercises and never push yourself too hard! Once you start with the basics, you'll be able to go more intermediate in no time! Now that we've settled on starting slow, I will begin our journey with some basic techniques and include some photos. As you see, these poses are great for beginners are can move into the more challenging poses. The first one we see is the "mountain" pose. This pose is how we will start every exercise. We will lift our arms up and breathe in, then lower our hands into prayer to breathe out. We will do this technique three times. Afterward, we will put our hands on the ground and step into the second pose called the "plank." Here we will hold our body up using our arms and working our abs. After staying here, we will skip the following two poses but go into our "downward facing dog" pose. Here, keeping your legs straight can be challenging, so we will peddle our knees back and forth to feel that stretch in the back of our legs. We will return to our "plank" and walk or jump our feet towards our hands. From there, we will gradually pull our upper body up vertebrae by vertebrae and lift our hands back to the mountain pose. And then we will breathe into our hands in prayer. Next, we repeat this flow three times or as often as we feel your body warm up. Great work! Now you've accomplished one of the basic techniques of yoga. Each time, before our movements we will always start with this type of flow. Now it's time to get into more stretching. Once you get back into your "downward facing dog," we will move into the "low lunge" pose. You will get into this position by lifting your right leg into the air while in your "downward facing dog," called the "three-legged dog." Then you'll swiftly move your leg into the middle of your hands. Here, you will feel a nice stretch in the back of your thigh and feel yourself needing to balance. We move from here to the seventh pose of "high lunge." You will feel a good stretch in the back of your thigh while you try to sit lower into the pose. Going into the eighth post, "warrior 1," you will begin to feel your balance while lifting your arms and moving into the ninth pose of "warrior 2". Once you feel that stretch you will bicycle your arms down back into the "low lunge". Next, we push our leg back to "plank" and do our flow all over again. From here, we will do the same technique with our left leg! Once we've done both, our exercises ended today! This flow will move our bodies, and we will start on the other poses in the next couple of weeks. Thank you for reading my blog, and I hope this will help my followers learn more about the basic techniques of yoga/pilates. With my experience and journey, it can be challenging to understand how vital these simple flows are. With time, we will move into more intermediate, and then you'll be able to challenge your body more and more each time! Don't forget to like this post and head back here in a couple of weeks to learn more poses!

Welcome to a fresh new beginning. I plan to use this platform to get started on giving my insight on the ins and outs of reinvigorating your body and strengthening your mental and physical health. I want to come on here every couple of weeks and give some pointers on how anyone can begin this journey with me. I started doing yoga and pilates right around the pandemic; since then, it's become a massive part of my life. In this post, I want to start with some basics my followers can begin with that will change their daily lives forever. And I hope it will stay with them for a long time so that they can live a longer and healthier life. 

Step One: To start, let's talk about the most prominent parts of yoga and pilates. You first need to purchase a yoga mat. Multiple types are sold at stores, from Target to Marshalls. In my own home, I have around four different mats. The prices range from $15-$200. It all depends on how vital the practices are to you. I first started with a cheaper mat from Marshalls that I still use daily. I use this mat outside on my porch, and it's a great one that's lasted me years. Around a year ago, I was gifted a beautiful ALO yoga mat. This mat means a lot to me because it was given to me by someone who knows how much I appreciate the practice. I will leave a link at the end of this mat because there's an abundance of colors and types that you can choose from. But the ALO mats are on the more expensive side, so you don't have to purchase one, and the cheaper mats can be just as helpful. So there's the first step to your journey! Pick a mat, then let's begin. 

Step Two: Now that you have your mat, make sure you change into something comfortable but easy to move in. I tend to wear biker shorts and a sports bra or leggings. That way, I won't have to pull my shorts up or have an oversized t-shirt in the way. I also always wear my hair in a low bun to ensure it doesn't get in the way when I do stretches/workouts on my back. Now you got your mat and your outfit ready! It's time to begin the class. 

Step Three: STRETCH! STRETCH! STRETCH! The most critical part of these routines is making sure you stretch your body before and after. Your body is constantly moving and can tend to become stiff. Once you lay down after a long night, your body needs a good stretch out. Before doing any exercises, you must move your muscles and fatigue them. This way, you won't pull anything while in the workout. We will begin with basic stretches that aren't too difficult, and once you gradually put stretching into your routine, you'll know your flexibility is improving. It will be a long journey, but it will benefit your muscles tremendously. 

Step Four: Now that we've got our mat, changed our outfits, and stretched our muscles, we will begin the practice. It's going to differ in many ways; we can start with some yoga moves that will get our bodies moving and work our way up to pilates/type classes. It will all be beneficial to our health nonetheless.