This 20-Minute Stress-Busting Yoga Routine Is Like WD-40 for Your Tightest Muscles

When the stress is piling on, all of those racing thoughts can lead to a domino effect of tension in the body. To melt it all away and reset your mind, one of the best things you can do is turn to your mat and flow through a yoga routine for stress relief.

While breathing techniques or strolls outside can always help to calm the mind, yoga offers a 360-degree effect on combatting stress. It works as a moving meditation to replace stress-driven thoughts with feel-good brain waves (research says so), to make actual space in your body, and to open up all of your contracted, tight muscles. And, in this week’s episode of Well+Good’s YouTube series Good Moves, the founders of Sky Ting yoga studio are bringing us a stress-busting yoga flow that only takes 20 minutes to reap the benefits.

“This is a 20-minute sequence for you to unravel some stress and anxiety,” says Krissy Jones, co-founder of the studio. “It’s a calming flow that you can do after a long day, or maybe you want to start your day with a more clear mind.” Really, the quickie yoga routine for stress relief is good to do whenever your body or your mind need to hit the pause button, and it doesn’t require anything except your mat (and maybe a cushion or pillow of some sort for extra comfort).

Within the yoga flow, you’ll be working through plenty of spinal twists that basically function as WD-40 for your back, along with light inversions a la downward dog to get the blood flowing. You’ll also get leg-lengthening and hip-opening stretches to get some space into those always-tight lower body muscles, plus everyone’s favorite yoga move: child’s pose. It’s 20 minutes of true relaxation and body love that work to give you a midday sense of peace. Jones’s tip? If you have a meditation practice, tack it onto the end of your flow for even more stress relief. Ready to dissolve the frustration of your to-do list? Hit play on the video above and get flowing.