Yoga at Home
A home practice is the heart of Yoga. That being said, it took me years to get into the groove of practicing at home. It’s daunting, and, I felt that if I couldn’t devote an hour, it wasn’t worth it. If this line of reasoning sounds familiar, please, learn from me and take this to heart: If you have 10 minutes, practice 10 minutes and bask in your 10 minute home practice. Even 10 minutes (heck, even 5 minutes) per day can be transformative.
When we come to Yoga or Meditation, we do so for a number of reasons.
Knowing our reasons can help us stay the course with our practice. Some of the reasons that people choose to practice are:
- A healthier body
- To quiet the mind
- To be more present, mindful
- To strengthen the qualities that asanas embody
- To see (and transform) how we “do” life
No matter why we begin a practice, eventually, a steady practice leads us to perspective, a clear(er) mind, and a greater ability to respond to life instead of react.
A home practice requires very little of us. An open mind, an empty stomach and bare feet are all that we really need. A sticky mat is helpful, but certainly not necessary. The most important thing is to know what is essential for YOU to be able to create a home practice. Do you need a video, or a podcast? Are books enough for you? Give yourself the gift of creating circumstances that will foster success, and then, set reasonable time commitments for your practice.
Hint: I NEVER say to myself, “I am going to practice for an hour every day.” Honestly, I would never practice! Typically I commit to 15 - 20 minutes of daily practice, and often, more time appears. It’s a recipe for success.
Here are some questions that can help you get started with a home practice:
Why do you practice? What are you seeking?
What do you feel you need to do at home to create practice time? (ie; “the house has to be spotless before I can practice.”) Is it really true? Or realistic?
Can you make (or find) 10 minutes per day for your practice?
If you don’t practice at home (and you want to), what stops you?
If you had 10 minutes per day set aside for practice, what would you fill it with? (ie; “3 asanas and 5 minutes of meditation”)
Got questions about creating a home practice? You can ask in the comments. Or, if you have a successful home practice, tell us about it.
As a Martha Beck trained coach, writer, Kripalu yoga teacher, and speaker, Nona helps dynamic women who want less stress and more joy in their lives.
For Nona, yoga and meditation were a catalyst – the experience of being fully in the body combined with feeling the stillness and power of her inner wisdom led her to belief that living a life connected to the wisdom of our
bodies is essential to vibrant health and happiness. For more information about Nona, you can find her at Insight Health Coaching.
How Yoga Changes Us
by Nona Jordan
Have you ever noticed how when you get tense or angry, you might tighten your belly or clench your jaw, or your shoulders come up around your ears? These reactions are, at their essence, body memories–habitual ways that our bodies respond to certain stimulus. Especially, I think, when we don’t express our negative emotions, they can get stored and compound our responses in the here and now. (ie; have you ever overreacted to a situation? I believe this is often a result of stored body memory)
About seven years ago, I was taking a wonderful series of online meditation courses through Wildmind. One of the things that the teacher, Bodhipaksa, shared with me was related to how we hold our bodies. I was expressing to him all the stress I was under at work and he, to paraphrase, basically told me to drop my chin when sitting at the computer and feeling stressed.
Well this was nothing short of a miracle. First of all, it worked. I would drop my chin, my neck would lengthen and all of a sudden I wouldn’t be a stressed out mess. Somehow, the simple act of dropping my chin and lengthening my neck allowed me to step back and be more mindful of the choices I was making. I had this total *aha* moment, “This is how Yoga asanas change our lives.” (But it took a Buddhist monk to show me!)
Let me explain. We learn these habitual body responses that “match” up with a neurological pathway that prescribe to us how we are going to respond in any given situation: remember our tight belly or our clenched jaw? By moving our bodies in new ways through consistent asana practice, we give ourselves the opportunity to rewire our brain’s responses. If our belly doesn’t tighten automatically (or we loosen it as soon as it tightens up), all of a sudden, we have shifted our habitual experience just enough to allow for a few moments of space in which to change our mind.
A relaxed belly, a soft belly, a long neck…all of these ways of being in our body are associated with relaxation, spaciousness, and perspective. Just as shallow breathing can bring about a stress response, so too can long, deep, relaxed breathing reverse that stress response. By changing the way we hold our bodies, we give ourselves the opportunity to change our mind. Practicing Yoga, we open and lengthen our bodies and the breath over and over again. Doing this, we are able to get past the layers of body-habit.
As our bodies move and respond in new ways, new neurological pathways are carved in our brains- this is one of the ways that the simple act of practicing asana over a period of time begins to spill out into our daily life. Organically, we find ourselves accessing our own wisdom, being able to step back and choose, which translates into being present and mindful. We find we don’t have to respond in the way we always have- through making space in our bodies, we magically make space for new ways of thinking and responding! We are, fundamentally, transformed.
Is there a way in which you respond physically that you can experiment with changing? Lengthening the neck, relaxing the belly? Uncrossing the arms? Loosening the jaw? Pick one and work with it for a week and notice if it changes how you habitually react.
As a Martha Beck trained coach, writer, Kripalu yoga teacher, and speaker, Nona helps dynamic women who want less stress and more joy in their lives.
For Nona, yoga and meditation were a catalyst – the experience of being fully in the body combined with feeling the stillness and power of her inner wisdom led her to belief that living a life connected to the wisdom of our
bodies is essential to vibrant health and happiness. For more information about Nona, you can find her at Insight Health Coaching.
Oceans of Yoga
T. Krishnamacharya, the father of Desikachar, taught Pattabhi Jois and B. K. S. Iyenger. They were young boys and their teacher devised yoga practices to suit their individual body types and energies. T.K.V. Desikachar, a former-engineer-turned-yogi carries on his father’s values that were brought down from the Tibetan mountains–that the individual comes first and that there is only one yoga. His son, Kausthub, agrees. Read more
Women’s Yoga
Kyle Roderick: What asana can women do at different points of the day when they are at work or at home to remedy anxiety, restlessness or that spaced-out feeling?
Mark Whitwell: Although there is no substitute for a yoga practice somewhere in the day, to support this by some light moving and breathing randomly in the day routine is supremely helpful.
For a few moments move and breath with the arms raised inhaling and arms lowered exhalation. This is the exacting process of strength receiving, the healing of our system. Simply to move and breathe with light postures correctly designed for each person. Forward bends and twists accompanied by exhalation serve the releasing of stress and anxiety. They are strengthening and healing to our Life, while the inhalation is refreshing, receptive and restorative. Read more
Puppy Dog Stretch Yoga-At-Your-Desk Series
The Puppy Dog stretch is good for your shoulders, back, and hamstrings. It will rejuvenate you from head to toe!
Stand up facing your desk and have the front of your body up against the edge of your desk. Place your palms down till they reach the edge of the desk. Place your arms shoulder distance apart and your feet hip distance apart. Ideally, the height of your desk should be more or less hip level. Now, walk your legs back until your hips are in line with your heels and you create a flat back. Keep the arms straight and draw the shoulder blades down the back. Lengthen the spine and sitting bones. Stretch the front of the thighs towards the back of thighs. Read more
New Wave of Healing
the new wave of healing meditation: kirtan kriya
Besides feeling blissful, relaxation is a medical fact. Thirty-odd years ago, Harvard cardiologist Herbert Benson, M.D. identified and scientifically confirmed what happens during the Relaxation Response, namely: heart rate slows down, brain waves slow down and move into theta, or the state of creative flow that is often only accessed when dreaming. The stress hormone cortisol stops flowing and natural feel-good, painkilling hormones such as endorphins are released.
Today, the medical aspects of various types of meditation are an emerging area of research. The first study of Kirtan Kriya kundalini yoga meditation by Dharma Singh Khalsa, M.D. and the Tucson-based Alzheimers Prevention Foundation International has recently discovered that this 12-minute meditation confers powerful cognitive benefits. Read more
Outdoor Yoga
written by ed moffett
My favorite way to do yoga is to go out to some beautiful place in nature where I can express yoga interactively with the natural symmetries around me.
Since every system of yoga has variations of the definition, it’s important to have some flexibility in our concept of what yoga is. Let’s face it- going to a yoga class involves a lot of work to prepare, travel, arrive at a certain time, position yourself in the studio room, participate in the class, pack up and go home. For many people, yoga class is the only time they ever do yoga, and some of us have a lot of resistance to the commitment. Others attempt a home “practice” where they follow a prescribed series of postures, duplicating what they learned in class. Read more
The Jivamukti Method
written by nicole nichols and heather fairfield
Practices For Liberating Body and Soul
Twenty years ago Sharon Gannon and David Life developed Jivamukti Yoga, a style that would become known around the world for its mix of challenging physical asanas and scriptural study blended with music, social awareness and devotion. Driven to communicate something extraordinary about human potential, in 1984 they created the Jivamukti method. The method quickly began to take hold in New York City where they started out with a few students in a small apartment. It has grown to become one of nine internationally recognized styles of Hatha Yoga. The method is taught in Jivamukti Yoga Centers in New York and Detroit, as well as internationally in Munich, Toronto, and London, where thousands of students commit to the study of this powerful transcendental method. Read more
Michael Bengry’s Gemini Track System
written by kyle roderick
breathing new life into yoga: michael bengry’s gemini track system
Like many devoted yoga practitioners and/or yoga studio owners, Michael Bengry of Golden Tree Yoga (www.goldentreeyoga.com) in Santa Barbara, CA. started practicing 14 years ago after a serious bout with back pain. While Bengry started taking a therapeutic back class, as his sciatica improved, he moved on to other yoga styles. Bengry studied with a number of instructors trained in the Iyengar method. Through this practice, he first started working with rope walls. Read more
Bikram Yoga
written by craig villani
Making the practice of hatha yoga accessible to six billion people worldwide is the primary philosophy underlying the development and growth of Bikram Yoga. Created by Yogi Raj Bikram Choudhury as a practical distillation of the classical eighty-four postures as set forth by oral transmission and recorded by the Vedic sage Patanjali, Bikram’s method of Hatha Yoga stands as a structured and foundational approach towards balancing the modern bodymind.
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