Hi, I used to practice at a yoga studio and went to classes everyday and loved it. Well I got ill and my practice seemed to go out the window. Now we are in the process of moving and I probably won’t be able to get signed up at a new studio for about another month. I really want to start my own home practice so that I can get back into my routine and practice that made me feel so wonderful. Does anyone have any suggestions to creating your own practice? Thank you, peace.
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It’s awesome that you’re committed to maintaining your practice at home, especially in a transition period. I try to get onto my mat every day, no matter what, and it’s been one of the best things I have ever done for myself.
I have a lot of ideas for you, but can you tell us what specifically you need help with? Creating a sequence of poses? Fitting it into your routine?
I am also interested in tips that help people with home practice. I go 1-2x a week to a studio that I really love, but have struggled at getting a good rhythm going when it comes to home practice.
Maybe I’m not one to be giving tips on this, but one thing that has helped me recently has been to not place a ton of expectation on my home practice. It has been hard for me not to see it as a bit of a failure if it isn’t as thorough a practice as what I do in class. I have been reminding myself that even 45 minutes on the mat is better than nothing. Cheers!
Thank you so much for replying. What I am looking for is like a sequence of poses, length of time and maybe when to include meditation and deep relaxation. I want to practice when I first wake up and before I go to bed. I would like a more energizing practice in the morning and a more relaxing one at night. Any suggestions? Thank you so much, peace,.
There really aren’t many rules. You may want to start with some approximation of what you’ve learned in classes, and modify depending on what works and doesn’t work. Maybe just have a general structure for your practice. Mine often (but not always) looks something like this:
light warm ups and grounding, maybe breath work or a reading
sun salutations and/or standing poses to build heat
standing balancing poses
other “strong” poses (pretty much whatever I feel like)
backbends/hip openers
inversion, maybe
core work
forward folds
savasana prep-savasana
seated meditation, maybe breath work or a reading
This can vary a lot, and be more simplified or way more complicated depending on your style of yoga, time allowed for practice, what you want out of your practice, etc, etc. The whole idea in this sequence is to build up heat at the beginning with more dynamic movements and standing stuff, and then to calm it down towards the end.
For the morning, maybe try emphasizing the energetic parts, like sun salutations, and then doing a shorter cool-down. At night, warm up just a bit, then concentrate more on forward folds or restorative poses.
I’d love to hear what you come up with and how it works out!
Hi RadianceinProgress:
Stretches- 15 mins say
relaxation(savasana)-5 mins,
breath-work/pranayama 10mins
then meditation -20 mins or more , in that order.
more relaxation is suggested here-perhaps another 5 mins, depending on how you feel
Any posture you feel comfortable enough in, is good enough for meditation.
Also You might find this link helpful:
http://www.swamij.com/stepsmeditation.htm
You’ll find a wealth of informtion on that site to guide a balanced & complete yoga practice, working from the gross to successively more subtler levels of your being, incorporating them all
From the physcial the breath and the mind and beyond giving due attention to all the yoga bodies/koshas, from the gross to the subtler.
Here is an example:
1)Classical asana set- incorporaating say flexion,extension,side-bending, twistiing
2)Savasana
3)One-to-one breating,abdominal breathing ,nadi shodhana etc etc(maybe avoid rapid breathing or agressive pranayama unless you are advanced)
4) Meditation on an object-
[I]Regards meditation[/I] methods(4):-watching the flow of air at the nostrils ( or on the bridge at the nostrils) is a good one-(ideally they should be equal) focusing on the Third-eye/ajna chakra is another using sambhavi mudra ,very gently to begin with.The third eye is like the master control centre electrical swtich for the nervous system so it is a good place to start to enter into the parasympathietic state.This is where most of the real work in yoga gets done, on the deepest levels usually by working on areas of the brain that would otherwise remain silent and dormant.
Ideally you want to incorporate all 4 elements
And check out this link for a list/index of practices you can utilise within a system like this:-
http://www.swamij.com/index-yoga-meditation-practices.htm
Daily practice is the key here.
Hello Radiance.
First, a sound yoga teacher/studio should encourage AND facilitate the student’s home practice.
Providing the student with consistency in teaching, using some series in that teaching, and conjoining those two with concepts and elements that translate to a home practice - this is the job of a yoga teacher. Since the practice is primarily one of using the body (depending on the lineage in which you are/were practicing) then we need to maintain our focus on the biomechanics and nature of the body.
As others have pointed out, there is no one way, no “do this” or “this is THE way”.
Therefore I’m sharing only what I have found to work in my practice, studies, and teaching which now exceeds 11 years.
This is a difficult question to answer because some misperceive meditation as the stilling of the mind when in fact stilling of the mind is a requirement for meditation, it is not, in and of itself meditation. For the when of it, do it when you want. It is lovely but I’d advocate some testing to determine when it is right for you.
The beginning of the practice is a time to bring the mind into the body and that is done by placing the mind on the breath and drawing both into the lungs.
This is the time to request that you consciousness be illumined by the practice.
I also use this time for centering the mental and vital forces to the heart center (and some define this as meditation).
An opening sequence should prepare the body for the asana practice to follow. Ergo I use the next 5-8 minutes to sit, open the hips, groins, and shoulders, then some gentle twisting, and the contraction of the quadriceps moving from Virasana to Baddha Konasana in order to protect the knees. Adho Mukha and Uttanasana finish the opening (for me).
Classical Surya Namaskar is very nice for warming the body when that is needed for that practice. From there, standing postures are followed by inversions. Inversions precede twists and backbends in order to release the invertebral muscles which are necessary for twisting and back bending. In order to protect the disks in your spine, back bends come after twists, not before. Ergo standing poses, inversions, twists, and backbends are the sequence followed before Savasana.
Deep relaxation should follow a practice (when it is not a practice in and of itself) as rigorous activity once the central nervous system has gone parasympathetic is very jarring to the nerves and we’ve got enough jarring to our nerves in our living - we don’t need it in our practice.
Since an asana practice is designed as a self-awareness exploration the time one spends in this posture or that posture purely depends on the nature of the exploration, it’s fruit or result, and the intention of the practice/practitioner.
I hope this is helpful.
gordon
Thank you all so much. You are all so kind and knowledgable. I am printing this out and trying some of your suggestions and I will let you all know how it goes. And yes my previous teachers did give us suggestions for home practice and I do remember practices from that class so I will try to incorporate it all in my new practice. I just always seem to have a hard time getting started but all of your suggestions have definitly led me in the right direction. Thank you so much and have a beautiful day, peace.