I Tried a 2,500 Year Old Morning Routine for 30 Days...Here's What Happened.

I turned 40 at the end of last year and I get compliments all the time that I don't look my age but even if I don't look my age I certainly Feel It In fact a while back my 74 year old Chinese mother-in-law challenged me to a fitness contest and let's just say that she won it was at that point that I realized I can't even touch my toes anymore yikes when it comes to my physical health and wellness I feel like I've gotten into a bit of a slump lately it's one of those things I know I should be doing but it's also been incredibly hard for me to build consistent habits around movement and exercise as Sir Isaac Newton said a body in motion tends to stay in motion and a body at rest tends to stay at rest unfortunately blaming the laws of physics doesn't do me or anyone else any good and that's why to get myself out of this rut I decided to harness my competitive spirit and run a 30-day challenge to add daily exercise into my morning routine when it comes to changing your habits I think it's important to know your weaknesses and be able to problem solve around them and I know that if I don't think an exercise routine is fun there's a zero percent likelihood that I'll stick to it so that's why for this 30 day challenge I turn back to the only workout routine that I've enjoyed doing since College which is a system of exercises called the five Tibetan rights which are said to be over 2 500 years old I've got to say I was skeptical going into this challenge but I was shocked and impressed by the impact of adding these simple exercises into my daily routine and as you'll see a little bit later it might even have changed my life before we get into that though here's a little bit of background on the five Tibetan rights the rights are said to be a form of Tibetan yoga however while the traditional yoga that originated out of India focuses on static poses the Tibetan rights emphasize a continuous sequence of yogic movements which is probably why they appeal to someone like me who's always found traditional yoga a little bit boring sorry I know I'm gonna offend people who love yoga in 1939 the rights were introduced to Western culture in a book called The Eye of Revelation which The Author Peter kelder claimed was a secret Fountain of Youth exercise routine introduced to him by Tibetan Monks who used it as part of their chakra balancing and de-aging practices now the origins and benefits of the rights are mostly anecdotal and still debated by some but the reported benefits include things like improved strength and coordination better circulation reduced anxiety better sleep improved energy and a youthful appearance I swear that I read somewhere years ago that it could even help reduce appearance of a double chin which is a benefit that I would definitely like to see myself how to do the Tibetan rites there are five movements or stretches that make up the Tibetan rights for the first right you stand upright with your arms outstretched in parallel to the ground and as you spin in the circle making sure to always turn yourself clockwise to perform the second right lay on your back on the floor and place your hands flat Palms down beside you raise your head to look towards your pelvis then raise your feet until the legs are straight up without bending at the knees hold that pose for a moment or two before slowly lowering your head and feet back to the floor and then do it all over again I forgot to mention in the first right that you're supposed to repeat the Tibetan writes a total of 21 times each and I'll make sure to link a few resources about how to do this exercise routine in the description box below for you in case you're interested in trying them out for yourself for the third right you kneel on a rug or a mat with your hands at your sides and lean your forehead towards the floor and then you bend backwards arching your spine while sliding your hands down your thighs to maintain balance then you return to the original position and repeat that 21 times as well the fourth right is called the moving tabletop and it's actually my favorite pose I usually like to do this one on the wood floor as opposed to the yoga mat because it's easier to slide into the sliding movements versus sticking to the yoga mat so to do this one you sit upright on the floor with your legs stretched out in front of you Palms down at your sides and then you bend your chin down to touch your chest and then you tilt your head back while raising your hips at the same time so that your butt lifts into the air and now ideally you should look like a table with your belly facing upwards towards the ceiling hold that for a few moments and make sure to squeeze your butt and leg muscles while you're in that position and then relax back to the starting position and repeat 21 times the fifth right is basically a moving flow between the downward dog and upward dog yoga positions it's also my least favorite stretch because it is so hard basically you want to make a V shape with your body facing down and then flow into an upward spine arch with your face pointing to the ceiling the breath is key here and you're supposed to breathe out when facing down and breathe in while facing up and I would like to point out that ideally for this pose your feet would be flat with heels touching the floor while in downward facing dog but that's something I've never been able to achieve even when I was in Fairly good shape so we'll just call that a work in progress so as far as how I did with this 30 day challenge I definitely struggled with motivation particularly at the beginning of this Challenge and I started the 30 day challenge on June 8th and to set myself up for success I made sure to place my workout clothes in my office the night before so that when I woke up they would be right there for me to change into and I couldn't make the excuse of not having the right clothes to wear to work out physically it was tough to do the poses at first and it was really demotivating for me to realize that I couldn't even touch my toes when I was in a seated position another problem one that I didn't expect was the issue of exercising in a comfortable temperature so it started to get up into the 80s here and we don't have air conditioning because we live in Europe and that's just not common here so what we do to combat the heat is I make sure to open the windows and doors as early as possible in the morning to let the cool air in and then we close them along with the blinds later to trap the cool air inside and I did find myself overheating a few times and I had to take my shirt off while exercising once or twice but then the cool weather came back and it was a lot more comfortable to work out one trick that I used to stay motivated was to cross off each day that I was successful in sticking to my morning routine on the calendar that hangs behind my office desk and I found myself feeling good when I looked at that calendar and not wanting to break the chain when I looked at it which goes to show you that habit tracking can be a really powerful motivation tool and I'm happy to report that I did stick to the rules that I set for myself for this 30 day challenge and I didn't miss a single day of exercise but before I talk about the before and after results I think it's important to mention that I didn't change my eating habits or exercise routine outside of this 30 day challenge in fact I actually exercise less than usual because my husband got sick and we had some really rainy weather so I wasn't going to the gym at all and we were able to go on our weekly walks together like we usually do and as a former binge eater it's also very important to me that I don't restrict my diet in any way because that can be really triggering for me so I continued to eat as I normally do and in fact probably a little bit more than I normally do because there were several times that I went out to eat or we had family get-togethers since the weather has finally gotten nice so one day I went out to lunch with my sister-in-law and we got some hand rolled noodles from a new Chinese restaurant that opened up and then the next weekend my brother and sister-in-law who recently finished renovating their house wanted to celebrate that with the family so they invited everyone over for Chinese hot pot and I totally stuffed my face with tons of delicious food like boiled fish balls and wagyu beef I personally like the spicy side of the hot pot best and the sauce that my brother-in-law made was to die for and then my father-in-law also celebrated his 84th birthday during that time so we all went to a Chinese restaurant for that we're gonna go to a Chinese restaurant for my father-in-law's birthday he's turning 84 and I am so excited because something there is amazing I cannot wait the boys like the Chinese pancakes and dumplings the best but my favorite dish is called then of course when you eat out as a big family like we always do there's always plenty of leftovers to go around and I think you can see a theme here that we eat a lot of Chinese food in this family but when we eat at home I also cook a lot of different variety of Cuisines and we eat things like pasta and hamburgers and french fries and veggie pizza that I make from scratch and double up on so that we have leftovers for the next day sometimes we even treat ourselves to Yummy Pastries made from our local bakery which we enjoy with a nice dark dealing tea and an egg for protein so what were the results of doing this Fountain of Youth morning routine for 30 days so when I first started this 30 day challenge I originally intended to share the complete before and after results and I didn't expect that this challenge was going to unlock a whole new kind of fear inside of me I think when I first started this challenge I was in denial about how bad of shape I was in and originally I was going to show you how much I weighed and what my measurements were around my waist hips upper arms upper thighs Etc but I just can't do it I just cannot bring myself to show my flabby batwing fat and my muffin top here on YouTube for the whole world to see and this is coming from someone who has opened up about some very emotional things here on this channel but I guess that exposing my poor Fitness is where I have to draw the line I mean I was even feeling squeamish about showing me doing the actual exercises and I think that a lot of you can probably relate to this feeling of exercising in public and having other people judge you for being out of shape or what your body looks like or if you're doing things right or wrong whatever it is and drop me a comment below if this is something that you deal with I'd love to know if this is something that other people also struggle with or if it's just a me thing however I am comfortable enough to share what my weight was before and after the challenge so when I first started this challenge I got on the scale and weighed myself and my weight was 132.8 pounds and after doing this exercise routine consistently for 30 days without changing anything else without eating differently and in fact eating worse than I probably normally do and not exercise sizing more and in fact exercising less I still lost weight and not only that I did notice that the Flappy bits on my underarms move less when I hold them up and wave sorry I couldn't show you the before because it was so bad but I can show you the after it looks so much better than it did before and I also do feel like my stomach my booty my legs they're all jiggling less this is so weird to talk about on my channel oh gosh but the biggest difference of all is that I stopped treading the exercises and I actually started to look forward to them which is huge for me because I haven't enjoyed exercising since I graduated high school and stopped doing competitive sports like track and softball and swimming and back then I used to be someone who would just like do bicep curls or sit-ups in front of the TV just because I enjoyed exercising and I was shocked to find that when I forced myself to stick to this exercise routine for a while while I rediscovered that old Joy inside of myself I'm actually getting a little bit emotional talking about it because it's like finding a buried treasure but the treasure is a little part of myself that I thought I had lost forever I was really hoping that the underside of my chin would firm up a little bit and I'd have a little bit less of this double chin effect that I sometimes see in my videos I think it did help a little bit and I did also feel that I slept better and have been less anxious since I started this challenge but my husband and I also have stopped drinking coffee this year which I think has definitely improved that aspect of my life as well so it's probably like a compound effect of many things and another huge benefit that I noticed is that I am finally able to touch my toes again not only when I'm standing up which I find a little bit easier but also when I was sitting down on the floor so that was a huge win for me so now that I'm done with this 30 day morning routine challenge I guess the big question is will I continue to do the five Tibetan rides now that I'm done with the challenge and the answer is yes I love my new morning routine so much and I definitely want to stick with it I do foresee that I might struggle a little bit a little further down the line because our home gets really really cold in the winter and if it's cold and dark when I wake up in the morning the last thing I want to do is exercise but I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it and I also know that it's not our ability to stick to good habits when things are easy but rather our commitment to staying disciplined when things get tough and motivation runs dry that really shapes our future in determining the kind of person that we are and the kind of life that we're going to live I don't see health and wellness as a final destination but rather as a continuous journey and I'm sure there will be ups and downs plenty of Sprints and setbacks but no no matter where the path I'm taking leads I want to enjoy the pleasure of walking it if you found this video valuable I would love it if you would give it a like and maybe consider going down and hitting the little red subscribe button and ringing the bell to turn on all notifications so that you don't miss any of the helpful videos that I'm sharing here on my channel each week to teach you the A to Z of simplifying your way to a life you love or I'll see you next week until then take care bye bye foreign

Channel: A to Zen Life

Views: 687,803

Keywords: morning routine, 30-day challenge, i tried yoga for 30 days, daily routine, self improvement, minimalist morning routine, healthy habits, 30 day challenge, matt davella, 30 day, 30 day challenges, here's what happened, the tibetan rites

Id: y_nGNNBpzKI

Length: 14min 37sec (877 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 30 2023