Garden yoga is path to surviving the twists of spring planting season

It’s the Baby Bear time of the year: not too hot, not too cold, just right. During the quiet of the day and in the stillness of the night you hear the sirens’ song in the distance luring you to make that dream of gardening a reality.

You take inspiration from what you’ve seen and read and visited the County Extension Office for practical advice from a Master Gardener Volunteer. You have your vegetable seeds and tomato seedlings picked up from the annual Spring Kickoff at our library’s main branch and will incorporate wildflowers to add color and variety and attract pollinators.

The last cold spell is becoming a distant memory, and the time has come to make your garden dreams a reality. There’s just one small challenge: how to keep from overdoing the physical work associated with gardening.

It’s easy to overdo the lifting, crouching, pulling, bending, and other maneuvers that can get your heart rate up and build muscle, but also leave you sore and aching. Warming up prior to exercising your green thumb can help minimize joint and muscle pain.

The Centers for Disease and Prevention considers that gardening is a moderate-level activity. One way of warming up uses yoga. For the uninitiated (I am at the head of that line), the term “yoga” encompasses more than one type. In writing this article I found sources that listed between seven and 28 types. And the number of yoga poses? One source that I found referenced David Gordon White, author of the book "Yoga in Practice," who says that there are over 84,000 yoga poses.

What to do, what to do?

I did a search (where would I be without the internet?) on “yoga garden routines” and found numerous articles and YouTube videos. When I decided that I would write about this, Mark Tancig, the Commercial/Residential Horticulture Agent at UF/IFAS Extension Leon County, forwarded me a publication put together by several Florida Master Gardener Agents.

Is there a place from which this can be downloaded? It’s 10 pages long with a complete description and a picture of each pose. The great things about yoga are that it is done slowly and gives you time to shift your focus away from you and the universe to just you and your garden. Once you’ve completed this regimen you can decide how you to spend that time most productively.

But we’re not quite finished!

After you’ve completed your chores du jour it’s best to cool down. Restorative yoga focuses on winding down after a long day and relaxing your mind. At its core, this style focuses on body relaxation. One source that I found ( mindbodygreen.com ) has yoga workouts than can be done at home.

Before you decide on adopting yoga as a warm-up to gardening it might be wise to speak to your primary health provider. Certain conditions like high blood pressure, glaucoma, osteoporosis, arthritis, joint replacement surgery, and pregnancy may prevent using it.

Camille Stein is a Master Gardener Volunteer with UF/IFAS Extension Leon County, an Equal Opportunity Institution. For gardening questions, email the extension office at AskAMasterGardener@ifas.ufl.edu.

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Garden yoga is path to surviving the twists of spring planting season