Spinal Warmup Yoga Exercises – Free Book of Kundalini Yoga Poses & Kriyas – Ch 1
The first Kundalini Yoga Kriya we we will explore is a very handy set called the Spinal Warmup Kundalini Yoga Exercises.
Kundalini Yoga Kriya #1 – Spinal Warmup Kundalini Yoga Exercises
Video of Spinal Warm-up Series from the Free Online Yoga Video series.
Purpose of Spinal Warmup Kundalini Yoga Exercises:
This kundalini yoga kriya is a very good set for doing as a warm-up before doing more advanced kriyas or doing independently if one is starting to put together their yoga practice. It very effectively warms up the most important part of the physiology, which is the entire back and especially the spinal cord region. Through the spinal cord runs the main subtle energy channel (shushumna nadi), which is considered the most important conduit for the movement of kundalini energy throughout the body. Also, along the spine lie the primary energy centers (chakras) and as kundalini energy moves up and down the spine it activates and balances the chakras and the associated organs and glands of that region.
Description of Spinal Warmup Kundalini Yoga Exercises:
1. Yoga Stomach Grind:
a. Guided Instructions for Yoga Stomach Grind:
- Sit up with your legs crossed.
- Hold onto your on your knees.
- Grind your stomach in a big circle counter clockwise for half the time of the exercise. Visualize drawing a big circle with your naval.
- Switch after half the time and grind your stomach clockwise.
b. Duration for Yoga Stomach Grind: 1-3 minutes
c. Benefits of Yoga Stomach Grind:
- Excellent yoga exercise for your digestive system as it gives all your important digestive organs a massage, forcing out toxins and waste into the elimination systems of the body.
- Works on the ileocecal valve insuring the proper direction for the flow of nutrients and waste.
- Warms up and loosens the lumbar area of the back.
d. Practice Tips for Yoga Stomach Grind: Make sure you are not leaning forward and back from the waist, this is the most common mistake people make. You have to arch your lower back as you move forward and arch back as you move in that direction.
2. Spine Flex Yoga Exercise: (also called Yoga Camel Ride)
a. Guided Instructions for Spine Flex Yoga Exercise:
- Sit up on your heels and rest your hands on your knees (rock pose).
- Inhale and arch your back forward pushing your sternum out. Exhale and bring your sternum in, arching your back out.
- Continue at a comfortable pace and rhythm.
b. Duration for Spine Flex Yoga Exercise: 1-3 minutes
c. Benefits of Spine Flex Yoga Exercise:
- Stretches the middle back and spine.
- Opens up the solar plexus promoting better flow of energy between the lower and higher centers of the body.
- Improved emotional balance.
d. Practice Tips for Spine Flex Yoga Exercise: If you have hard time sitting on your heels you can place a small cushion under your feet/ankles for added comfort.
3. Cat-Cow Yoga Exercise:
a. Guided Instructions for Cat-Cow Yoga Exercise:
- Come onto your hands and knees, placing your hands shoulder width apart and knees hip distance apart.
- Inhale as you arch your back by pushing your stomach down and bringing your head up. Open your eyes and look upward. This is cow pose.
- Now, while exhaling, arch your back up by pushing your stomach up and bringing your head down (like a cat).
- Continue at a comfortable pace and rhythm going between the 2 poses.
b. Duration for Cat-Cow Yoga Exercise: 1-3 minutes.
c. Benefits of Cat-Cow Yoga Exercise:
- Works on stretching your entire spine and strengthens all the nerve junctions that lie along the spinal cord.
- Give your entire system a glandular tune-up.
- Improves your eyesight and works on the optical nerve.
d. Practice Tips for Cat-Cow Yoga Exercise: Make sure you are not rocking back and forth, but, that just your spine (and head) are moving.
4. Yoga Twist:
a. Guided Instructions for Yoga Twist:
- Sit up with your legs crossed.
- Hold your shoulders with your fingers in front and thumb in back.
- Your elbows should be parallel to the ground and at shoulder level.
- Inhale as you twist to the left, exhale as you twist to right. Your head goes with your torso.
b. Duration for Yoga Twist: 1-3 minutes.
c. Benefits of Yoga Twist:
- Promotes flexibility in the entire back.
- Massages the inner organs.
d. Practice for Yoga twist: The motion should be continuous and keep the pace at a level you are comfortable with. Slow down if you start to feel dizzy.
5. Yoga Neck Rolls:
a. Guided Instructions for Yoga Neck Rolls:
- Sit up with your legs crossed.
- Open your mouth as if in a half yawn.
- Roll your neck in a big circle going in one direction for half the time and then switch directions for the rest of the time.
b. Duration for Yoga Neck Rolls: 1-3 minutes.
c. Benefits of Yoga Neck Rolls:
- Releases tension in the neck and shoulders.
- Promotes better blood flow to the brain and higher centers.
d. Practice Tips for Yoga Neck Rolls: Spend additional time working on areas which feel particularly tight or knotted.
That concludes the Spinal Warm-up Kundalini Yoga Exercises.
Hi Anthony,
Kundalini Awakening symptoms are not necessary fun at all. In fact, in some cases they can be pose quite a challenge, so if you are progressing silently, there is no harm in that.
If you are finding yourself with more energy, more at peace and more in sync with your life, those are the signs and symptoms that I would look for.
Don’t worry about shaking during meditation, my hands sometimes shake too. Notice it and then leave it alone and march on. It’s the body and nerves adjusting, energy being summoned, or a catharsis taking place. Let it happen.
Best,
Anmol
anmol i havent been getting any kundalini symtoms, i feel kinda left out though its hard to maintain a regular kundalini yoga practice, also my hands always shake in zazen meditation, how do i stop it
i sometimes get deep in the meditation and then i feel myself becoming still though when that happens i lose concentration because i am noticing that
Hi Leilah,
Whew! Think I lived your experience with you reading that there. Thanks so much for sharing and great to hear the website is proving helpful and enjoyable.
I think I will have to re-read your story a few times to digest it all :-D. Please feel free to ask via email anything you like.
All Good Wishes,
Anmol
LOL. I apologize, that was definitely….
not short.
I am so grateful to have come across your site!! This is just what I was looking for.
Last month I had a bit of what some can call an explosive, somewhat sponatenous kundalini awakening?. I think it was a near death experience more than anything but here I am! While, drugs did play a role in this outcome, there were a lot of things going on in my life that I’m sure had a lot to do wiht this occurence. For the last two years, I was on a downward spiral to self-destruction. Emotionally, physically, and definitely spiritually. Since I was about 14 I started becoming very spiritual. I would meditate almost everyday and would find myself “progressing” in these areas of consciosness rather quickly. By 2004, I began having what some would call “astral projections”, or “OBE’s”, whatever you prefer to call it. As well as some rather, strange dreams. There is one that stands out in my mind specifically and this was a dream in which I was forced to face my deepest fear: snakes. Somehow I found myself in a gigantic pile of large snakes unfathomable to man! I managed to walk, or rather pull my body through them and get to place of safety. This was very distressing but I handled it well somehow. Flashfoward three years later, and I find myself experiencing the SAME thing – in real life. I had taken some psychedlics, that I would prefer not to mention on here and while I was well aware of what I was stepping into (I had done this particular substance several times by now), I was not aware of what would happen this particular time.
Every year I go down to my hometown, to revisit my old (well, they still are!!) best friends. This time, I was very stressed due to reasons, once again that I rather not disclose, but this was by far the worst – well, most troublesome and toll taking year in my life.
Anyway to make matters short, here are is an excerpt from my journal:
“IN freds room – I heard them conversing before they gave me the key or rather – the awakening. And basically they were answering my prayers. They apologized for not letting me in on the big secret. They apologized for making me feel so alone. For my lack of understandting and that I had the right – that I deserved the right to finally know.
And then they began the process… there at least 10 of them around me…. These beings which I seemed to have remembered from my past. They were like wind in their movements. They sounded like wind too. And they would move around me … kind of glide and whisper.. and then they were preparing to do something and as soon as I realized what they were going to do (although I didn’t know it was going to be like a kundalini awakening.. at the time I simply knew that it was not the right time and that it was not the right place for such a thing to occur but they insisted) I shouted. I screamed. I pleaded.
NONONONONONNO! I chattered
Not yet!
Not now! Please!
“Calm down, it is going to be alright, just relax” , they assured me.
And just like that, in that moment, a light… a brilliant white moving – feeling light – was shot through my body. From my base all the way up to and through my skull. My field of vision was no longer that of a humans but rather, I was seeing everything in the room as if I were above or watching the scene take place from distance. The most unconditional love was being poured through me as this light was coursing through me and I felt nothing but calm and stillness.
This was my answer.
This was what I always knew but never thought.
From this point on, I seemed to be going in cycles of cleansing and rebirth. I would do this through my dancing. And spinning – much like a ballet girl. And laughing hysterically. And well – I just went with what the spirits were telling me. And that was… if I wanted to be calm and enjoy it – it was best that I do what I do best. Which was to dance and be playful. And so I did. This apparently cleansed the space as well. The energies. And it did. Abby and everyone laughed. They had already come down but what I was doing seemed to be lifting their spirits and it was mine too… I made a joke out of it all. I tried my best to bring them into my world, so they could understand where I was coming from.
“Oh you guys want me to dance? Okay!” And off I would go, laughing my merry way about the room. I then regressed back into a young playful child. I thought of my dad and his playful inner child. We were much alike in this way.
I laughed hysterically as the space and time waves would continually warp between us all. It was the same damn PATTERN – repeating itself over and over and over again. Every time or “loop” – in the middle of this strange – slowed down wave – I would bust out LAUGHING hysterically! A laughter never known to mankind!
Maybe here and there, but not everywhere.
And then, Abby and her husband would follow on my laughter. Probably laughing at how damned HARD I was laughing but it was because in these repeating moments, I would see how FUNNY life was. How seriously I had been taking it all along. How silly this was! How silly and playful I was in NATURE! How I had forgotten my whole essence along this crazy path. How I was still existing yet, somehow! How I still remained UNCHANGED after ALL THIS TIME. How these beings were and are here ALL ALONG. HOW I never SAW. How I never HEARD. All this in an instant. Although, a very, very LONG instant. And not to mention, again that these instants were repeated… for 7 days… every 15 minutes.
The laughter after about the 2nd day… just came out. I could not control it. I could not. And I felt bad for this – try as I might – but for some reason I just had to continue laughing. And crying.
Then it was the fear and the paranoia. No trip sitter on sight…. No one to counsel me at this time… I found myself in the ER. Against my will, actually. It was a trick. Sonia and her husband took me there. But I wanted them to take me. I had had enough. I wanted the “trip” to end.”
There are many things I did not mention in here. I will have to put that in my book! lol.
You can always e-mail me, and I would love to share and even ask about some thing with you.
Once again, love the site. It is very helpful for me as I have just been starting to workout again and eat right! the yoga is going well with this. To let you know, I have started off with the spinal warmup yoga exercises and plan to do this every morning, eventually adding the strengthing exercises along to this.
A warm thank you,
Leilah
Sat Nam DeAnna,
Happy to share my knowledge :-D.
Cheers,
Anmol
Sat Nam!
Thank you for this wonderful source of information!
Brightest Blessings,
DeAnna
Hey Anthony,
Glad to share my knowledge, and will add the shoulder shrugs into the Online Kundalini Yoga Exercises E-book and let you know once that chapter it’s published. Will try and do that soon.
Cheers,
Anmol
anmol
when are you going to add shoulder struts in?
p.s thanks for sharing this wonderful knowledge ill give you feed back on benefits ill receive
Hi Martin,
For stomach grind, you should visualize drawing a big circle with your belly button parallel to the ground.
Most importantly, you should be arching lower your back as you come forward instead of leaning forward from the waist (and then go around kind of like if you were trying to do a hula-hoop going round and round around your waist :-).
Should have videos up for these sets in a week or so.
Best,
Anmol
I don’t quite understand the stomach grind. Maybe I’m just failing to achieve any rotation and I’m just moving my stomach in and out…
Hi Steph,
Parallel to the ground. So the key is to arch your back forward and then around, all the time visualizing as if you are drawing a big circle with your belly button.
The most common mistake for this yoga exercise, is that students lean forward from the waist, instead of arching forward.
I will be uploading videos of these kriyas too, I know they are way overdue. Hopefully in the next month or so, they will start to come online.
Best,
Anmol
For the stomach grind, are the circles we are tracing with our navels parallel to the ground, or perpendicular to it?
Hi Laura,
No Worries, let alone my name, even I am unimportant. Only the teachings matter.
Glad you are benefiting from the website.
Best,
Anmol
Hi Anmol, My apologies for misspelling your name. Thank you for helpful information.
Kind Regards, Laura
Hi Anmol, My apologies for misspelling your name.
Kind Regards, Laura
Hi Vini,
Thank you for your feedback. Glad you are finding the website beneficial.
Best,
Anmol
thank you great source of information and inspiration