The Ten-Minute Practice

What genuinely fits into ten minutes, what does not, and three versions worth memorising for the days that is all you have.

What fits

• Warming the spine in all four directions.
• Two or three sun salutations.
• Two or three standing poses held properly.
• Two long holds on the floor.
• Five minutes of breath work.
• A short Savasana.

Pick two of those, not five. The mistake in a short practice is trying to fit the shape of a long one into it.

What does not fit

• A proper warm-up followed by demanding work. There is not time to do both, and doing the second without the first is how people get hurt at seven in the morning.
• Anything at the edge of your range. Ten minutes does not include the twenty it takes to get warm enough for that.
• A peak pose. Skip it.
• More than one focus.

Version one: move

For a stiff morning, or when you have been sitting.

• Cat-cow, 10 rounds. (1 min)
• Downward Dog to low lunge and back, 3 each side, moving with the breath. (2 min)
• Three sun salutations, stepping, knees down. (3 min)
• Warrior II, 8 breaths each side. (2 min)
• Standing forward fold, knees bent, 30 seconds. Roll up. (1 min)
• Savasana, 1 minute.

Warms everything, asks nothing extreme, and leaves you better than it found you.

Version two: undo

For the end of a working day.

• Rolled blanket along the spine, arms open, 3 minutes.
• Supine twist, 90 seconds each side, knees on a bolster or cushion. (3 min)
• Supine figure-four, 90 seconds each side. (3 min)
• Savasana, 1 minute.

Addresses exactly what a desk does: a rounded mid-back, a stiff spine, tight hips. Requires no warm-up because nothing is loaded.

Version three: settle

For a bad day, or before sleep.

• Legs up the wall, 5 minutes. Blanket under the head, blanket over you.
• Extended-exhale breathing, 4 in and 8 out, 4 minutes — either still with the legs up, or sitting.
• A minute of stillness.

No movement at all. This is a complete practice and on the right day it is the most useful of the three.

The rules for a short practice

Do not warm up for two minutes and then do something demanding. Either the whole thing is gentle, or the whole thing is a warm-up.

Do one thing. Ten minutes on hips does something. Two minutes each on five areas does not.

Keep Savasana, even at one minute. It marks the end, and the transition out matters more than its length.

Set a timer. Otherwise a ten-minute practice becomes a four-minute one.

Have the props already out. Fetching a bolster is ten percent of your session.

The frequency argument

Ten minutes six days a week is sixty minutes and six exposures.

Sixty minutes once a week is sixty minutes and one exposure.

For strength, range and habit alike, the six wins comfortably. Tissue adapts to frequency of exposure more than to total volume, and habits form through repetition rather than duration.

So the short practice is not a compromise you should feel bad about. For most people it is the better arrangement, and the hour-long session is the treat rather than the standard.

What to do with the ten minutes you did not have

Nothing. Do not make it up tomorrow.

A missed session is not a debt, and treating it as one is how practices become obligations and then stop. Tomorrow's practice is tomorrow's practice, at whatever length fits.