Yoga Wake Up – Morning Routine

I love this app. I have chronic health issues and wake up in a lot of pain each day. This app is such a positive way to start my day. You can pick from tons of “wake ups”. Some are just meditations and a little movement, others have stretching and restorative yoga poses you can do in bed as you wake up. Then others get you up and doing standing yoga poses right next to your bed. They all have different themes and vary in length so you can choose what’s right for you each day. For someone who had a tough time getting out of bed each day, this has been a game changer. I start everyday on a more positive note. And it keeps me from looking at my phone or checking in with the world and letting all the noise in my head first thing when I wake up. At least now for a few minutes I’m feeling into my body, focusing on gratitude and connecting to my intuition - depending on which wake up I choose. I highly recommend this app.

I’m still on the fence to purchase so I’ve only been using the free recordings since the majority of them require a subscription. For the ones I’ve listened to, I love them! The quality instructors and the message and movement together bring a beautiful meditation practice. The wake up from bed sessions are amazing - even for the mornings you don’t even want to open your eyes, by the end I’m sitting up and ready to get my day going. Some mornings that is NOT easy for me! The one thing I’ll point out is the music selection is sometimes a little distracting but that’s just a personal preference. At one point an easy meditative song transitioned to Natalie Merchant (singing “thank you” so there was a message there, but still), then another practice had a song with multiple loud drum sounds - cool songs that might be fun to dance to - it just took my attention away from the practice a bit. Overall the app is definitely worth downloading and trying. Again the quality of the instructors is really powerful, super knowledgeable, and deliver with a kind tone. I’m grateful for this app after every session!

I’ve had this app for about 4 months and I love it. However, it stopped waking me up somewhere around 2-3 updates ago (I’m pretty sure it was when the sleep tracking was released). I turned off the sleep tracking and reviewed my alarms and noticed that the volume bar was grayed out on all of them, which explained why I was getting the “have a nice day” message but not hearing the alarm. That seems to have been fixed with this latest update, because I was able to adjust the alarm volume up last night. However, this morning I got the message that I had an alarm set that did not go off because the app was not open. That wasn’t actually true though, my phone was locked with the app running, which I confirmed by opening my phone. I’m disappointed because I love waking up to the soothing sounds and getting a morning stretch without having to touch my phone (which is why I paid for the service for a year) but it just isn’t working like that anymore. I’m on the latest iOS 11 service pack, so I know it isn’t happening because of old phone software.