Getting Started
As a yoga teacher, I’m asked numerous questions about physical ailments, poses to relieve tight muscles, diet, nutrition, and most commonly, how to start a personal practice at home.
At first, I thought the answer for doing yoga at home seemed obvious…just roll out your mat and do poses. I watch my clients practice yoga daily. They know the poses and understand the benefits, so I assumed they could easily take the practice home and figure it out. Realistically, it’s a bit more than just rolling out your mat.
Habit Defined
Like most activities that benefit health and quality of life, these activities require intention followed by consistent action. I like to call this pairing of intention with consistent action a habit. A habit isn’t created overnight; a habit is a nurtured, diligent effort that takes time, patience, and compassion.
A home yoga practice is a habit.
Pros for a Home Yoga Practice
These days, acccess to a yoga class is much easier than it was 10 years ago. Live online and recorded services as well as yoga studios offering a variety of sub-styles are abundant. You can catch a yoga class just about any time.
Unfortunately, class schedules don’t always line up with your life; online classes might be too difficult or lack instruction leaving you feeling lost and discouraged. Also, you might be needing a more personalized approach in your body, timeline, and location. This last situation is when a home practice is ideal.
The beauty of a home practice is that you can do whatever you want for as long or little as you want!! BONUS!! That sounds brilliant to me. If you already know even a little yoga stuff, you can generate a home practice that you will love.
Tips to Starting a Home Yoga Practice
The idea behind a home practice is that you create a practice that makes you feel good on your terms. You are unique in your needs. A home practice is your opportunity to design the type of practice that ideally benefits you on your timeline. Think of your yoga mat and your practice time as your personal sanctuary to re-boot and revitalize.
Tip 1 Unroll your mat
This seems obvious, I know, but hear me out. Unroll your mat and sit on it. Watch TV or read. Try it for 10 minutes. This simply gets your headspace in the yoga mentality. You don’t have to do anything else. What might happen is that you might start doing some stretching. It doesn’t have to be yoga specifically.
Tip 2 Decide to do yoga ONCE a week for 10 minutes
Creating a goal is a good start, but it needs to realistic. Often, I hear three for a weekly target, but it’s pressurizing to perform. Life is busy. Start with ONE. It’s much easier to find time one day a week than three. This step can be done with Tip 1 above.
Tip 3 Unstructured – Do what feels good
A yoga class is structured. It’s easy to follow a planned class. The need to have a well-thought flow is often a stalling point for initiating a home practice. Let go of that for now. Just start doing movements that feel good. Your movements don’t need to be specific to yoga. You might blend in some other stuff you know from other modalities. It doesn’t matter. Just move. 10 minutes goes by fast when you’re feeling good.
P.S. If you can have the TV or computer going in the background, it’s totally OK. At some point, you may switch to music.
Home Practice Beginnings
What may begin to happen after a few times is that you start adding yoga poses that you like and end up on your mat for 12 or 15 minutes. Eventually, you trade the TV for some music. From there, your home practice grows because you feel better afterwards giving you incentive to do it again. And it starts with simply unrolling your mat.
Final Thoughts
If you can carve out 10 minutes ONCE a week to unroll your mat and move around in feel good ways, you have a home practice. The mental channel you create with this effort is the nurturing beginning to form a habit. These diligent three steps are the initiating efforts for developing your home yoga practice. You got this!!