Round Out Your Practice: Spirit

Meditation isn't always as easy as it sounds. It's a practice of noticing, interrupting, and returning to your immediate senses. And it's no easier when done at home, without a teacher to guide you.

By Cyndi Lee

1. Om: Begin your practice with the chant om.

2. Meditation: Sit in a comfortable cross-legged position. Place your palms on your thighs. Open your eyes about halfway and rest your gaze on the floor five feet in front of you. Focus your attention on the breath. Whenever you realize you've gotten caught up in a thought, label that activity "thinking" and return your attention to your breath.

This will happen over and over, and it's no problem. Meditation is a practice of noticing, interrupting, and returning to your immediate sensory experience. Practice waking up and letting go as a way to get to know yourself better, to understand your own habits—which will, in turn, lead to understanding others better and feeling more connected to them. Sit like this for at least 10 minutes.

3. Warm-up Vinyasa:

• Exhale into Cat Pose, inhale into Cow Pose
• Down Dog
• Plank
• Down Dog

Then lower onto your hands and knees, tuck your toes under, and come into a squat with your heels lifted off the ground. Come up off your hands and bring them into prayer position. Rise all the way up on your tiptoes and then lower back to the squat. Work on zipping your legs together to begin developing your midline connection. Come back onto your hands and knees. Repeat the sequence three times.

4. Sun Salutation:

• Mountain Pose
• Upward Salute
• Standing Forward Bend
• Right step back into a High Lunge
• Down Dog
• Plank
• Knees-Chest-Chin
• Cobra
• Down Dog
• High Lunge (Right Leg)
• Standing Forward Bend
• Upward Salute
• Mountain Pose

Repeat the sequence on the other side, then a second time on each side. Then do another version of Sun Salutation:

• Mountain Pose
• Upward Salute
• Standing Forward Bend
• Flat back
• Four-Limbed Staff Pose
• Upward Dog
• Downward Dog
• Right Leg Warrior I
• Right Leg Warrior II
• Four-Limbed Staff Pose
• Upward Dog
• Downward Dog
• Left Leg Warrior I
• Left Leg Warrior II
• Four-Limbed Staff Pose
• Upward Dog
• Downward Dog
• Jump forward to flat back
• Standing Forward Bend
• Upward Salute
• Mountain Pose

5. Featured Sequence:

Perform the sequence presented twice, once to each side.

• Ardha Chandrasana (Half Moon Pose)
• Virabhadrasana III (Warrior Pose III)
• Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward-Facing Dog Pose)
• Vasisthasana (Side Plank Pose)
• Anantasana (Side-Reclining Leg Lift)
• Urdha Mukha Svanasana (Upward-Facing Dog Pose)
• Gomukhasana (Cow Face Pose)
• Ustrasana (Camel Pose)
• Bharadvajasana (Bharadvaja's Twist)
• Simhasana (Lion Pose)
• Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward-Facing Dog Pose)

After the last Downward Dog, lower your knees to the floor and rest in Child's Pose.

6. Inversion: Headstand. Draw the legs into the midline to create the necessary stability to relax your breath and mind.

7. Closing Poses:

• Bound Angle Pose
• Revolved Head-to-Knee Pose
• Seated Forward Bend
• Supported Shoulderstand
• Knee-to-Ear Pose

Then do Corpse Pose, resting in the confidence that the ground will hold you. Open up to the big blue sky, which is just like your own vast mind.

8. Om: End your practice with the chant om.