One of my favorite expressions is “a stitch in time saves nine.”

I even made up a jazz jingle with this expression to help my darling little sister-from-another-mister with positive habit forming when we were roommates in Paris. (Miss you, Sophia.)

Is it an old hackneyed idiom? Perhaps – but this expression, however trite, holds great power.

Though its meaning may be more focused on nipping a problem in the bud, I’m also partial to this expression because of its underlying lesson of maintenance. (The secret sauce when it comes to adopting holistic habits, btw.) I.e. if you do a stitch every day, the day won’t come where you’ll have to do nine at once. A few more illustrative examples would be:

When you clean the counters every day, there’s so much less grime on the official cleaning day.

When you work out a little bit every morning, you don’t have to work out like a crazy person for two hours on the weekend.

Furthermore, beyond maintenance, if you’re stitching in time, those stitches are adding up. More sophisticated expressions of this concept are the “compound effect,” the “slight edge,” or quite simply, “do less, more often.”

Things that make the biggest difference in our lives are usually easy to do, and easy not to do. One stitch is easy, nine… not so much.

But this has been a lot of metaphor. Let’s talk real life.

For example, 30 days of just doing 10 minutes of, say, meditation? That’s 300 minutes of meditation. 60 days of eating a leafy green salad once a day… well, that’s a lot of greens. But, oh how easy it is to say, “Uhhh… I’ll meditate tomorrow” or “I’ll eat a salad for dinner... maybe.”  And the “easy” compoundable task doesn’t get compounded – nor do the benefits. Though what is compounding, then, is what you’re actually doing. So if that’s poor choices, sedentary-ness, or even negative self-talk… it’s compounding. (I highly recommend reading The Slight Edge to learn more.)

It’s incredibly powerful.

Well, I’ll tell ya…

Today’s 10 minute yoga stretch is the easiest stitch-in-time way to add in yoga to your life because it’s a ten minute practice. And as Tony Robbins says, “If you don’t have ten minutes, you don’t have a life.”

I invite you to try this practice every day for a week and see how you feel. I swear… even just ten minutes of the specific movements and poses that I chose for this practice will make you feel like a different person. Calmer. Relaxed. Refreshed. More aligned and awakened. Guaranteed – or your money back. (Oh, wait… it’s free! All the more reason to do this practice every day!)

There’s nothing too intense. There are no chatturangas. No complicated standing postures. The key is to just get on the mat. Every day.

So let’s stitch and stretch!

Please let me know how you find this 10 minute yoga stretch, and if you’d like to see more. It’s always encouraging to hear your feedback.

Also, I’ve been doing this practice every morning before work, but you can certainly do this as an evening cool down as well.

Namasté, friends, and get stitching!

P.S. Of course, at the end of the day, it all comes down to daily habits – that’s what makes easy tasks easy after all. We stitch-in-time when we don’t have to think about it, or make a daily decision of whether or not to “stitch.” (For a wonderful resource on all things habit, please read Atomic Habits. It’s beyond brilliant.)