- Hi, I'm Ally Maz.
I'm a yoga teacher,
and this is how I work it.
I'm gonna take you through 24 hours
of my beauty and wellness routine.
I've been teaching yoga for 15 years.
I also teach meditation and breath work classes.
I started off as a professional dancer
who got injured
and was struggling with a pretty bad eating disorder
and just really felt like I needed to heal.
I found the practice of yoga first
as a way to just connect back to my body.
Hi, Allure.
It is six AM.
I have one hour before my first class starts.
I'm gonna take the dog out and get my day started.
So I dry brush before I even hop in the shower.
This is a dry brush.
This is probably my most consistent self-care routine
for the last 10 years.
You pull the dry brush up the body towards the heart.
So you go feet, up the legs,
belly,
up towards the heart,
arms.
And it moves the lymph in the body
and you feel your circulation start to
kind of go,
it's really, really energizing.
I get in the shower
and I take a hot and cold shower,
so I generally do all of my hair washing,
shaving,
lathering,
all the things with hot water,
and then I go to as cold as I can for three minutes.
I know it sounds crazy,
but you shock your body into
a little bit of a stress response
which builds resilience,
mental clarity,
focus.
So I'm showing up for myself first,
doing the things that make me feel really good and strong
so that I can really just be in service of others
through my teaching.
All the skincare happens outside of the shower.
So I go vitamin C serum,
into hyaluronic acid,
an eye cream,
and then I like a really thick, heavy moisturizer,
so something that has, like, some density into it.
My skin is really dry,
so that's my favorite base.
After I shower,
I do my makeup,
which takes me about five minutes.
So throughout the week
a lot of my yoga classes are digital,
so I'm on camera,
so I do put a little bit of makeup on
and I feel like when I'm on camera,
I'm sweating,
and so I don't like a ton of cakey makeup
or even powders,
I really like cream-based makeup.
It's really fresh, really natural,
it's not a ton of makeup,
but it's just enough to feel confident on camera.
So after I finish my makeup,
I scrape my tongue,
and then I brush my teeth.
And I don't know if you've ever seen
a tongue scraper before,
but it's essentially scraping the tongue
of all of the kind of toxins and build up
and stuff that sits in your mouth overnight.
Definitely when I started practicing yoga,
I got introduced to Ayurveda
which is the ancient science of life.
It's as old as yoga is,
thousands and thousands of years.
And these kriyas, or rituals,
of essentially detoxifying the body,
all of these ways to really purify the body
is helpful to purify the mind and our thoughts.
So I have about 30 minutes before class starts,
so I am gonna go ahead and make an herbal infusion,
and then get my day started.
So before I go to bed at night,
I take a handful of specific herbs into these mason jars,
pour some boiling water over them,
I let them sit overnight.
I'm someone who suffered with asthma my entire life
and when I started drinking mullein infusions,
I've slowly weaned myself off of the need
to be taking these steroid inhalers.
Obviously check with your doctor about all of these things.
So with the mullein leaf specifically
and kind of the strengthening of my lungs,
in support of with using breath work as well,
I feel like it's supported my stamina
and allowed me to come through a lot clearer
without me panting through the entire class.
So I try to be out the door at 6:40,
doesn't happen every single time,
but I try to eat always before.
So I'll make a smoothie
or I might even just have a piece of toast,
just a little bit of sustenance in my belly.
Then I grab my yoga mat, my water, and my laptop,
and I am gone for the day.
Okay, it's seven AM,
I just got to Open,
I'm about to teach a really sweaty yoga class.
So let's gets inside and get ready.
I teach at Open,
we are a mindfulness studio for everyone,
so we have a digital app,
that's why I'm often teaching digital livestream classes
or filming those classes,
and then we have an in-person studio in Venice as well.
I teach mainly vinyasa yoga,
which is a fluid style of yoga,
heat building, some challenge.
I teach to music.
I love curating playlists
and making music for my classes.
So definitely each class has an element of challenge,
connection,
breath work,
and meditation.
So this is the teachers' lounge.
And here is set.
A little space for us to chill.
And then this is wardrobe
where we have all of our beautiful,
fuzzy, cozy, neutral pieces.
I head back downstairs and put my mic on,
which is a little thin Britney Spears mic.
Put my inner ears in,
that's where I hear my music,
and I also hear my voice as well.
My approach to yoga is that
it is for everyone and every body.
I know that I am a thin, able-bodied white woman
and have been afforded a lot of privilege because of that,
but I think it's so important to A,
honor the deep and rich roots
in which yoga comes from,
and B, make sure that everybody feels welcome
into these practices.
So when I first started teaching,
I was so planned.
I would have, like, 17 journal pages
just to teach one class.
15 years later,
I do not plan my classes,
I show up totally empty,
and just kind of see what moves through me.
Okay.
Sweaty class, amazing class,
so much beautiful energy today.
People practicing from all over the globe
on our livestream.
The next class starts at eight AM,
which is a seated breath work practice.
So I basically have a little bit of tea,
put a cozier sweater on,
and then I go live again at eight AM
for active breath work.
Breath work is any sort of manipulative pattern
of the breath
for a desire outcome.
So the type of breath work I teach
is an active breath work,
meaning it's gonna be energizing,
clarifying.
It's a three-part breath
and it happens through the mouth
and it looks like this.
[breathes deeply]
And what that breath pattern is doing
is it's actually stimulating
your sympathetic nervous system,
so it's stimulating your fight or flight.
People often have pretty emotional responses.
Sometimes you feel like you wanna laugh
or you wanna cry
or you wanna scream.
But you move all of this kind of stagnant energy
out of the body.
The breath work class ends at 8:20,
and then I go grab a coffee and a bite to eat
and I head to the beach.
I come back to the production studio
and that's where I'll do my computer work for the day,
whether it's teacher training,
truly just admin stuff,
or playlist and class design.
That's kind of the bulk of my day.
So after I've done all of my computer work,
I will head over to our popup studio in Venice
where I teach an in-person breath work
and sound meditation experience.
The in-person breath work experience, I think,
is something super, super unique to open.
30 people come in,
you lay on a mat,
you get a blanket,
you put an eye mask on,
and I guide you through about 30 minutes
of that active breath work pattern
into playing the gong,
singing bowls and chimes.
So it's a one hour experience total.
That class ends around seven PM.
So when I get home,
I'm very spoiled,
my husband is an amazing cook.
So this is our dinner.
We've got cauliflower,
kind of buffalo style wings,
a little iceberg wedge.
Here's our chef.
After I eat, I will have a bath.
I feel like water is the ultimate cleanser
in releasing energy,
especially when I teach the in-person class,
people go through a lot.
They're crying,
they're talking about an experience that's heavy,
and I'm just there holding space for that.
But it can be a lot,
so I feel like my nighttime routine
and those rituals are really about
kind of cutting the cords from the day
so that I'm not taking on other people's energies
and stories.
So like, getting into the bath or shower,
whatever I'm doing,
getting out of the clothes,
it seems silly,
but just getting out of the clothes that you were in
is so important.
It's a good time to detoxify too
and let go of the previous season,
so I feel like this mustard bath really helps with that.
I sit in here for 20 minutes, let it out,
finish with a quick cold rinse.
This is Dr. Singha's mustard bath.
It is also an Ayurvedic formula.
So there's mustard in here,
there's also a few other things like
essential oils, wintergreen,
eucalyptus, rosemary, and thyme.
It's kind of a spicy bath.
You put it in your bath, it looks like pee.
It's yellow.
It smells amazing
and it makes you sweat.
So you stay in your bath for about 20 minutes
and you just let yourself pour with sweat.
And to me, that's just, like, letting go of the day
and releasing anyone's energy that I'm holding onto.
So next thing I'll do is use this ear oil.
It's from Banyan Botanicals.
You take this, I put it in hot water in the glass jar,
just to heat the oil up
so that it has just, it doesn't come in cold to the ear.
You take a couple drops,
you drop them into your ear.
I usually just sort of massage around into the ear,
wait a few seconds.
And I just find that there's something about this practice
that's really, really relaxing.
I also wear those, like, plastic in-ears
with music blaring
and this kind of feels like
I'm getting all that, like, technology energy
out of my ears.
Next up I have this wooden hair comb.
Usually at nighttime, I just do this.
It feels like I'm literally loosening up
how tight my skull is,
especially if I'm wearing my hair up in a ponytail.
The last thing I do before bed is journal.
It's really helpful for me to empty my mind
through journaling
so that I can be more present for my sleep
and then teaching my classes the next day.
Okay, it's nine PM, I'm exhausted,
and I'm so ready for bed.
I just finished up all of my nighttime rituals
except for one.
Mouth tape.
Are you ready for this?
The last thing I do before I go to sleep
is tape my mouth shut.
So optimal daily breathing
is when we are breathing through our nose
with our mouth closed.
When you breathe through your nose,
you're accessing over 30 functions of your nose.
When you mouth breathe,
you are bypassing all of those functions
and you're just inhaling dry, dusty, dirty air
directly into your airways and your lungs,
which can be really disruptive.
So it's training your body to close the mouth.
That way, you're breathing through your nose
the entire night.
It's essentially like you're doing a breath work practice
all throughout your night.
Just gently pressing closed.
Here I am.
Off to sleep.
See you next time, bye.
[soft ambient music]