Your Yoga
Yoga is an art.
As a kid I wanted to play guitar. I went to lessons. I didn’t practice between lessons. My teacher kept saying “you can’t really learn without practicing at home”.
He told me this every week. He kept teaching the same bits over and over, which was all he could do because I didn’t practice. I didn’t progress; I lost interest and quit after less than a year of lessons.
Just as a musician must practice their musical instrument daily, or a dancer practice every day, yoga students who want to make progress will have to find the self-discipline to start a daily practice.
The most important reasons to begin and continue a home practice
- You get to know your own body , your own strengths and weaknesses.
- You gain the mental and psychological benefits that will not come without daily home practice. You will learn more about yourself than any books or workshops can ever show you, because you will be taking that inward journey every day.
- You will have this touchstone, this place of anchoring every day, A true blessing in this fast paced,imperfect, and sometimes crazy world we live in.
How do you begin a home practice? To start, you do what you can remember from class (so yes, do attend classes.) Take your time getting into and out of postures, and hold postures longer, to make discoveries and build strength.Enjoy the journey!
At Home – have a place for doing yoga, a place you like, it can be in any room, outside on nice days.
Have a time for yoga; people who don’t choose a specific time for yoga have trouble doing it daily. I carved out time in the early morning, because too much can happen once my day has started.
Individual – Just you with yourself. It can be done with or around others, but you are doing your yoga, no chatting, no interruptions, no TV, phone, no distractions.
- Take some time, five minutes is good, to become aware of and deepen your breath. Pranayama (Breath control awareness), Asana, Dharana (deep concentration).
- Begin moving with the breath, repeating 3 to 10 sun salutations. Listen to your body. Breath is generally, inhale as move up or forward, exhale as move down.
- Do standing poses – warriors, triangles, tree or others; switching it up is good, hold each asana for 5 good breaths.
- Do Dandasana and a few seated postures and one or two laying down.
- Include one inversion. Legs up (dandasana on your back is an option).
- Do a sun salutation or vinyasa when you feel energy or focus waning, Do a child's pose when you need a rest.
- Always do savasana for a minimum of 5 minutes
Practice without attachment to success or failure, pure dedication to move, raise energy, and grow. It is pure effort, pure concentration, and pure discipline. Eventually this will become a moving meditation. After asana practice is an ideal time to practice seated meditation.
Seeking earnestly to find balance of effort/ease to match where you are at on any given day.
avoid these excuses
“I don’t have time for it every day.” By making time for a daily practice the rest of your day will be more productive. The rest of your day will be less stressful. These blogs discus how yoga does this in more detail; yoga for beating stress yoga as tool against fatigue
“I do enough other exercise.” Great! But, by doing a home practice of yoga, you’re less likely to get injured doing other exercises and be able to do them longer as you age.
“I’m active in my daily work (or life).” Most often, in our daily routine, we do many repetitive movements, with the focus on what we are doing rather than the body and mind doing it. We use limited amount of the many muscles, less range of motion and less systematic use of many muscles. If your work is hard physical labor, less and/or “restorative” yoga might be what you need to practice at home.
“I don’t care if I make progress I’m just doing yoga for maintenance.” There is no such thing as maintaining, unless you are making progress. Unless you are strengthening muscles in your body, and moving in your full range of motion 4-6 times a week. Exercise is stimulus. The changes to body tissue happens in the 24 to 48 hours afterwards. You become weaker and more rigid after 48 hours. This is even truer as you get older. After the 48 hours… if there is no stimulus again your hard work begins to get undone. Period, that’s it. (After months and years of daily yoga you maintain better flexibility if you do miss some days or weeks, your base-line has gotten higher).
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