Yoga Warmup: 3 Basic Fuzz-Busting Poses

What are your favorite poses right after getting on your mat? I like to warm up with a “gooey” Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward Facing Dog Pose). By slimy I mean I warm up with lots of movement. I mobilize all my joints, including those in my arms and legs and all my spinal joints. I stretch both sides of my body, but I don’t worry about stretching symmetrically from side to side. The point is to check in with my body and listen to what it needs on any given day. Because it’s so easy to stretch almost anything in Dog Pose, it’s my favorite yoga warm-up pose.

Especially if you practice early in the morning, your body needs to get used to practicing yoga. Warming up is essential, and it feels good too. After a night of relative stillness, the fascia (the connective tissue that surrounds the muscles) forms a layer of what anatomist Gil Hedley calls “down.” (Here’s his awesome video on fuzz.)

Fuzz, tiny fibers that connect muscles to each other, forms on the sliding surfaces between your muscles. This is a natural process that occurs whenever we stand still for a period of time. However, down inhibits the ability of muscles to slide past each other, causing them to stick together.

Stretching and moving melts the fuzz, allowing our muscles to slide over each other again. This is why we are generally more flexible in the afternoon than in the morning. Our bodies had a chance to move and melt at least some of the down. If we don’t bother to move and stretch on a given day, the fuzz begins to thicken, making it more difficult for it to dissolve when we decide to practice.

For this reason, even if you can’t do a full yoga practice, it’s a good idea to practice a yoga warm-up pose (or two or three). This will keep the fuzz at bay so that when you take the time to train formally, your muscles will be more receptive to it.

Fuzz Busting with a Peanut

Before I even get into anti-fuzz poses, I like to start practicing by rolling a massage peanut under my feet and legs. Here’s how to do it:

While seated on your yoga mat, roll the Peanut Massage under the sole of your foot 7 to 10 times. Then go back up, 7 to 10 passes under (or over) the following parts of the body:

• Outer foot
• Inside foot
• Calf
• Exterior of the calf
• Shin (you will need to do this with hands and knees, or roll the peanut on the shin while sitting.)
• Hamstrings
• Quadriceps (the best way to do this is to sit and roll the peanut over the quads.)
• Glutes
• Exterior glutes

Repeat on the other side.

Of course you can improvise. There are many other parts of the body that can attract your attention. Massage Peanuts have become a staple in all of my yoga classes, and my students use them at home, take them on vacation, etc.

3 Yoga Warm-Up Poses to Break the Fuzziness

In addition to Dog Pose, there are a few other poses that make great yoga warm-up poses if you don’t have time to fully practice. You may want to have a yoga mat and yoga strap on hand. Here are three of my favorites:

1. Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward Facing Dog Pose): As I mentioned, Downward Facing Dog Pose is a great all-over stretch. When practicing it as an anti-fuzz pose, move all of your joints and stay moving. Don’t worry about the shape. Think about when your dog or cat does this pose. They do what feels good, not what they think is right. I like to practice half-dog pose with my hands on the kitchen counter while waiting for my tea water to boil in the morning.
2. Talasana (Palm Pose): Talasana focuses on the sides of the body. While you can stretch your sides to some extent in Downward Facing Dog pose, Talasana stretches the entire side line of the body, from the outsides of the feet to the hands. Also feel free to move around in this pose. Explore the twist in Talasana. Using a yoga strap between your hands in this pose allows your chest to expand more easily.
3. Urdhva Hastasana (Upward Hands Pose): Urdva Hastasana focuses on axial extension, but you can also add an element of backbend to it. Experiment with different hand positions: palms together, yoga strap between hands, fingers together, palms facing up.

This is a pleasant and complete practice for eliminating lint first thing in the morning. You can also easily practice Talasana and Urdhva Hastasana at midday, during a short yoga break from your office. This short practice can stand alone or serve as a warm-up for the rest of your regular yoga practice.

About Charlotte Bell

Charlotte Bell discovered yoga in 1982 and began teaching in 1986. Charlotte is the author of Mindful Yoga, Mindful Life: A Guide for Everyday Practice, and Yoga for Meditators, both published by Rodmell Press. Her third book is Hip-Healthy Asana: The Yoga Practitioner’s Guide to Protecting the Hips and Avoiding SI Joint Pain (Shambhala Publications). She writes a monthly column for CATALYST magazine and is the editor-in-chief of Yoga U Online. Charlotte is a founding board member of GreenTREE Yoga, a nonprofit organization that brings yoga to underserved populations. A lifelong musician, Charlotte plays oboe and English horn in the Salt Lake Symphony and the folk sextet Red Rock Rondo, whose DVD won two Emmy Awards.