10-Minute Yoga Practice for a Good Mood

Sometimes, cultivating a good mood is a simple as syncing your breath with your movement. The following yoga flow relies on grounding movements and purposeful pacing to help shift negative energy. It’s designed to be fast enough to create change but slow enough to maintain presence, allowing you to reset your mood with intention.

No matter how you arrive on your mat today, know that you have the ability to decide how you would like to move and breathe during your practice—and how you would like to carry that new mood into the rest of your day.

10-Minute Yoga Practice for a Good Mood

While no props are needed for this practice, you are welcome to keep a block or block-like prop nearby for support if needed.

Child’s Pose

Begin in Child’s Pose. Bring your knees wide, toward the edges of your mat, and extend your arms long in front of you. Send your sit bones toward your heels. If this doesn’t feel comfortable, sit back on your heels with your shoulders stacked over hips.

Stay here for 8 cycles of breath, allowing your inhalations to deepen and your body to soften. Sigh out your moth on your final exhalation.

Cow Pose

Come into Tabletop, shoulders over wrists, hips over knees. With your inhalation, arch your spine in Cow Pose, dropping your belly and lifting your chin.

Cat Pose

With your exhalation, round your back and tuck your chin in Cat Pose.

Repeat 5 times, moving with the pace of your own breath, slightly hovering your knees in Cat Pose for the final 2 rounds.

Downward-Facing Dog

With your next exhalation, lift your hips up and back into Downward-Facing Dog, pedaling out your feet or swaying your hips to arrive into the pose.

Take 2-3 breaths here.

Three-Legged Dog

Inhale to sweep your right toes up toward the sky in Three-Legged Dog. Lengthen through your leg.

Tiger Curl

Draw your knee toward your chest and shift your shoulders forward over your wrists in Tiger Curl.

Repeat this cycle of movement 3 times, moving with the pace of your breath.

Low Lunge

With your final exhalation, step your right foot through into Low Lunge. Reach your arms toward the sky. Stay here for 1 cycle of breath.

Half Splits

With an exhalation, send your sit bones and fingertips back toward the wall behind you as you straighten your front leg, coming onto your front heel in Half Splits. Inhale back to Low Lunge.

Repeat this dynamic movement 3 times with the pace of your breath.

Twisting Low Lunge

With your next exhalation, twist open toward the right. Stay here or reverse the twist by resting your right fingertips on your low back or left thigh and reaching your left fingertips over your head.

Revolved Half Splits

Release your left hand to the mat, straighten your right leg again, and reach your right hand toward the sky in Revolved Half Splits.

Wide-Legged Standing Forward Bend

Land both hands inside your right foot and curl your back toes under. Then pivot to face the long edge of your mat. Let you head hang in Wide-Legged Forward Bend. Grab hold of your elbows and gently sway from side to side.

Stay here for 3 cycles of breath.

Dynamic Goddess Pose

Slowly roll up one vertebrae at a time. Pivot your toes outward to face the corners of your mat. Cactus your arms and sit low in Goddess Pose.

Inhale to straighten your legs and reach your arms high, exhale back into Goddess with your hands in prayer at your heart.

Triangle Pose

Inhale to reach high once more. With your exhalation, pivot your right toes to face the front of your mat, and shift your left foot so its outer edge is parallel to the short side of your mat.

Bring your arms straight out from your shoulders so that they’re parallel to the mat, then send your left hip toward the back of your mat as you hinge over your right hip in Triangle Pose. Reach your left hand toward the sky as you draw your left shoulder back in space. Your right hand can rest against your front shin.

Stay here for 1 cycle of breath.

Revolved High Lunge

Look toward the ground. Bend into your right knee and land your left hand on the inside of your right foot. Bring your right arm toward the sky as you pop up onto your back toes in Revolved High Lunge.

Bring both hands back to the mat and step your right foot back into Downward-Facing Dog. Repeat all movements, from Three-Legged Dog through Revolved High Lunge, on the opposite side, ending back in Downward-Facing Dog.

Plank Pose

Shift your weight forward into Plank Pose.

Thunderbolt Pose

When you’re ready, rest your knees on your mat and sit back on your heels in Thunderbolt Pose. Cup your hands in your lap, palms facing the sky.

Breath here for 1-3 minutes or as long as you’d like.

Closing

When you’re ready, bring your hands together at heart center. Bow your forehead to your fingertips and thank yourself for showing up on your mat today.