Hi,
Welcome to my first ever yoga blog.
I've been writing about yoga for four years and officially teaching yoga for over two years, and for that entire time I've been meaning to write my own blog about yoga. It just seemed the obvious thing to do...
So what's stopped me? The same reasons that stop all of us from achieving the things we want to do.
In Light on Yoga (the 'Bible' of yoga) B K S Iyengar lists the nine obstacles to a regular yoga practice:
1. Vyadhi - sickness
2. Styana - languor
3. Samsaya - doubt or indecision
4. Pramada - indifference
5. Alasya - laziness
6. Avirati - sensuality (? - not sure about this one)
7. Bhranti darshana - false knowledge, illusion
8. Alabdha Bhumikatva - failure to maintain continuity of thought
9. Anavashtittatva - instability of concentration
(I always wanted to add: 10. Being a parent...)
I would say that a mixture of all of the above (with the possible exception of number six) have contributed to the continual putting off of this blog for around two years.
But now I've navigated the obstacle course of languor, laziness etc, taken the bull by the horns, and written it! Success!
Well, not quite. The art of the blog is to keep up a consistent, regular, high-quality stream of content, regularly blogging so that the magic imps at Google sense the activity of your website and bump it up the Google ratings. Thus, not only do I have to find the impetus and drive to start it, I also have to KEEP IT UP.
Why on earth any of this is relevant to you
It struck me that my procrastination in getting on with this blog could have wider relevance. As a student of yoga you'll know some of the benefits of coming to class regularly: physically feeling stretched, mentally feeling challenged and emotionally restored and opened.
And that's just from one class once a week (or two, if you're lucky). Imagine the benefits of doing yoga every single day - a 'home practice'.
We all know that this would be good for us. But for one or all of the nine reasons listed above we put it off till the mythical day that we 'have more time'.
Starting a home practice
I would love to help you start a home practice. But before I get stuck into the practicalities of what that involves, the first step is wanting to start a home practice.
So I'm going to outline some of the multitudinous benefits.
· you'll get better at yoga
· you'll enjoy your lessons more
· you'll have fewer aches and pains
· you'll have more energy in your everyday life
· you'll be more in tune with your body
· you'll sleep better
· you'll be able to access a sense of calm when needed
· you'll develop a very useful self-discipline
· you'll be less afraid
· you'll be more in touch with your emotions
· you'll look and feel younger
I deliberately put that last one last, as I didn't think you'd read the rest! Notice that at no point did I write that you'll gain muscle tone, stretch your tendons and hamstrings, decrease your resting heart rate and increase lung capacity. But it will also do all those things too.
You're convinced!
I'm hoping that you're now convinced that starting a home practice sounds like a good idea. This is the first step - congratulations!
The next step is working out how to fit it into your life in a consistent, realistic and achievable way. This is harder, as that long list of obstacles that has stopped me from writing this for so long, seem to do their utmost to get in the way of the things we know are best for us, but mysteriously don't seem to pop up when we're getting sucked down an online rabbit hole.
How this blog aims to help you
My aim with this blog is to create a guide to setting up your own home practice. It will be from my own experience, from my own brilliant teachers and from the books that have helped and guided me. If you'd like to know more, just read the blog that I send each month (that's the plan anyway). I intend to include short practice sequences, guides to practising inversions safely at home and lots of other info!
The idea is to give YOU the tools and confidence to set up a home yoga practice, while feeling that support and help is never far away.
This blog's takeaway
If you're feeling inspired and you can't wait that long to know how to start, I'm going to give you 6-step, handy home practice guide to help you get started.
1. Put your mat (and props if you have them) somewhere accessible - this doesn't include the boot of the car.
2. Pick just three poses that you remember from class and write them down.
3. Choose a 10/15 minute slot tomorrow that you can commit to - write it down on a post it note/ set an alarm/ tell your family.
4. Do those three poses in that slot.
5. Congratulate yourself!
6. Repeat.
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