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If you’re interested in yoga and wondering how to do yoga at home, then you’ve come to the right place.
As an incredibly busy professional, I often can’t make it out to a yoga class. My schedule doesn’t always permit me to adapt to the times when classes are starting, and I often can’t afford the extra time on either end just making my way out to the yoga studios in my neighborhood.
And so, by necessity, I began figuring out how to stay consistent with a yoga practice within the comfort–and confines–of my work schedule and home life.
The first thing I’d recommend to anyone who wants to get started doing yoga is to take as many classes as you can afford to take right off the bat. 10 or 12 classes will definitely give you a thorough sense of what yoga is and whether you like it or not. By the time you’ve attended 10 classes, you’ll likely be seeing the benefits of the practice. Yoga is incredibly reinforcing that way.
However, it’s often just not possible to attend classes. Whether you’re traveling or just busy at home with work and kids and a million and one obligations, you’re going to need to figure out your yoga practice on your own.
Working with a teacher at the start gives you a sense of the best practices to adhere to within the postures. It’s incredibly hard to learn yoga out of a book without a teacher–and remember, yoga has traditionally been passed from teacher to student through a great deal of one-on-one work. There’s just no replacing a live teacher to get you headed down the right path in your yoga practice.
Yoga DVDs present a much-needed opportunity to receive attentive instruction while still retaining the flexibility and spontaneity of doing yoga at home. Yes, it’s true, the teacher on the DVD won’t be able to help you with direct adjustments, but if you’ve already experienced a teacher’s knowledeagable guidance in person, the advice given by teachers on yoga DVDs will often remind you of what you’ve already been shown in person. And you can’t beat the convenience!
Yes, my cat is also an avid yogi, perfectly elegant and relaxed.
So, doing yoga at home is totally possible and really not that big of a deal. Get a great Yoga DVD (or more than one for some variety…if you haven’t checked out how much the typical Yoga DVD costs, you’ll be surprised to find that you can often buy a full DVD for less than the price of a single yoga class). Grab your mat, cue the DVD and get started!
One of the best things about doing yoga at home with DVDs is the fact that you can do exactly as much–or as little–as you have time for. Many DVDs offer several different series so you can mix and match depending on what you feel like working on and how much time you have available for yoga.
One of my favorite things to do is follow a single teacher through many different yoga classes by getting a bunch of their DVDs. Rodney Yee has a ton of different DVDs available, and he’s been making yoga videos since the early 90′s. If you find you like his style, you’ll be able to follow him through a different yoga series every day and be able to keep going for over a month.
Ana Brett and Ravi Singh have put together a huge number of Kundalini Yoga DVDs, so if you take a fancy to their style of yoga, there again you’ll be set for a long time coming without having to repeat yourself. Just pick up–or rent, as many of these DVDs are available from Netflix–a bunch of their DVDs and take your time working through one and then another.
Finally, I just want to offer a few quick tips to help you make the most of your at-home yoga practice:
1. Always take care to warm up when you practice yoga at home. Don’t just dive into the middle of an intense series. If you go to a class at a real-world studio, you’ll always begin with a warm-up activity of some kind. There’s a reason for this–it helps you avoid injuries and obtain maximum benefit from the full yoga class. Basically, use your fast-forward option on your DVD player with extreme care when doing yoga at home.
2. Allow some time for relaxation. It’s easy to neglect the periods of rest when we’re racing to keep up with a busy schedule. However, so much of the benefit of yoga comes from relaxing the body after working it hard. Take full advantage of the rest periods within whichever yoga workout you’re doing.
3. By the same token, leave time for meditation as often as possible. Believe me, I know–sometimes it simply isn’t possible to fit everything in, and it’s a miracle if you can even run through some sun salutations on certain days. But whenever possible, spend some time in meditation after you run through your yoga DVD. Remember: yoga’s primary purpose is to prepare the body and mind for meditation. If you skip the meditation, you’ll be missing out on the best and most important part!
4. Breathe, and then breathe some more. Breathing is a central part of yoga and meditation practice. You should make sure that your breathing is right from the very beginning of your practice. Breathe deep and connect each inhalation and exhalation with each movement. At first it may be difficult as you will tend to concentrate more on the posture, but relax and be conscious of each breath.
Here is a great video for a breathing meditation that you can do after your yoga practice, it is very powerful, in fact it is supposed to be the most powerful breathing technique in meditation. There are three levels in the video; beginners, intermediate, and advanced. Make sure to stay at your level until you are really comfortable enough to go to the next.
So those are my pointers to you if you want to make the most out of doing yoga at home. Thank goodness we live in a time when we can enjoy some of the best yoga teachers in the world giving classes right in our own homes. I’m incredibly grateful for what I’m able to do thanks to the yoga DVDs in my collection. My hope is that you’ll find some great inspiration–and perhaps some new recommendations–here at YogaDVDs.net Thanks for stopping by, and happy practicing! Namaste.
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