Here is a warm up that is quite simple, with nothing too fancy. It doesn’t feel quite right to me to tell people where to breathe in and where to breathe out. So as I teach the movements of this warm up sequence slowly there is time for several breaths in which to experience each posture and transition. Then, in order to get the blood flowing, the body warm and people excited I move more quickly and it feels natural to me to take one breath per movement (or so). Where would you inhale and exhale?

Beginning on all fours:

1. Cat

2. Cow

3. Child’s pose

4. Stretch your arms forward, keeping your shoulders back. Look out like a turtle from its shell.

5. Slither low along the ground keeping your elbows up, supported and narrow as possible — like coming into Knees, Chest, Chin.

6. Baby Cobra — keep your shoulders further back than your head.

7. Press back to all fours

8. Stand on your shins with you hands on your waist

9. Step right foot to side, turned out with the right knee bent, shin perpendicular to the floor.

10. Side bend with right forearm on right thigh, left arm extending up and over toward right.

11. Stand on shins, both hands behind your back clasped to open chest.

12. Cat pose on shins arms reach forward into space, and then move onto all fours without collapsing.

13. Cat to do it again.