7 steps to practice yoga at home
Have you ever seen someone doing a yoga asana practice and thought: how do they know which posture to do, one after the other, so fluently?
If your answer is yes, this blog post is for you. We will discuss some ideas for starting your physical yoga practice at home from scratch.
When I started building my practice four years ago, it was a slow and not-so-steady journey until I began to uncover the depths of all that Yoga is and to get really interested in it. Still, since the beginning, I have felt a lot of curiosity about all that the practice holds, and even though I didn't know it with my conscious mind, my heart kept leading me through that path. It was like my soul knew that there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Now, I will share with you some tips on actions that kept me going and helped me get into the consistent practice I have today, where I can practice with or without a teacher leading me.
1. Don't be too hard on yourself. Everything comes with practice and time.
Whenever we start something new, it is important to remember that building something from zero won’t happen overnight; it will take effort, compassion, and love to build, little by little, whatever it is, in this case, your home yoga practice. Be kind and loving to yourself in the process, and have fun!
When I started my yoga asana practice back in Brazil, I would only do it once a month, and as soon as I came to the US, six months later, I got a membership at a studio, but even with it, I would only go to class once a week max. I wanted a way to start practicing from the comfort of my home because I couldn't even remember what many of the postures my teachers would go through in class. That's when I went with the next tip.
2. Practice with yoga cards.
I decided to get some yoga cards to look at the postures and create sequences that would make sense in my body.
I would line them up, starting with knee postures or sitting down, then coming up for standing postures, finding some flow, and finishing with the poses to cool down.
The set I got even came with some cards for pranayama, mantras, meditation, warm-up, standing posture options, and some pre-made sequences that I could follow if I wished to.
Following these cards helped me make sense of the transitions between one posture and the other, remember the names, and become aware of the alignment for each posture. If you want to check them out, click here.
I kept working with it for a while but was missing some freedom in my practice, so I started practicing the following tip.
3. Move your body without getting attached to a particular pose or sequence to follow.
I felt the need to connect with my heart and feel what it was asking me to do at the moment. I would play some tunes, sit on my mat, take a few moments to meditate, connect with my breath, and do whatever I felt like doing.
So the tip is, do what seems intuitive, what comes from your bones, remember that your practice never needs to be in a certain way, and keeping that open mind will allow you to start to connect the poses creatively. If you have never done that before, it might seem weird, but do your best to step out of your comfort zone and go little by little. Find a place where you feel safe, play some music, or flow with the silence. While practicing this step, I actually felt that I was tuning in, connecting with my heart and the power of the breath. Keep doing 5, 10, or even 15 minutes once a week and watch the magic happen.
4. Practice yoga classes on YouTube.
Once I started feeling a more significant connection with my body and breath, I felt the need to practice the asanas for a longer time, something like 1 hour or so. Even though I still had my membership at a yoga studio, I didn't have a very consistent practice, and it wasn't every day that I felt like taking myself out of the house for my yoga practice. I needed a way to have longer classes at home, and that's when I remembered YouTube.
I see YouTube as a handy platform that allows you to try many different styles of yoga classes, and that's what I did. I know that what worked for me will not always work for you, but I'd strongly suggest that you try it. Through it, I could practice from restorative to vinyasa classes and learn from teachers who followed the classic yoga philosophy and the tantric philosophy. I could try teachers who would guide me through breath and connection with nature and others who would teach me anatomy and a lot of alignment.
Another thing that would be a big part of my yoga practice started happening here, and I will talk about it on the 6th tip. I would choose a class that felt good in my body, mind, and soul and do it over and over again, so then I could start to pay attention: what postures felt good, which ones didn't, why, how was my mind that day, my body. I also began to write in a journal explicitly for Yoga and ask myself some questions that were ignited by my practice.
It was amazing to experience all this variety, but then I felt like I wanted to deepen my practice in the style and the lineage that I liked the best, and that's when I started seeking a teacher who could support me on my journey in person.
Ps.: of course, if what you are looking for with Yoga is just a moment to be with yourself, to move your body, get some sweat going on, you can probably stop in here, and there's nothing wrong with it, it will still bring you countless benefits for mind, body, and soul, but if you feel the curiosity to explore more of all that Yoga is, I highly recommend you to connect with a teacher in person. And so here we go for the next tip.
I have a couple of classes on my YouTube channel. If you are interested, please check it out by clicking here.
5. Find a yoga teacher that resonates with you.
As soon as I figured out the style of flow and philosophy I resonated with the most, I found my primary teacher, Greta Hill, whom I deeply identified with. During her classes, I felt safe and confident in the way she guided me, and I would always leave my mat with a lot more curiosity about all that Yoga is. Finding a teacher that you trust will support you in deepening and enriching your practice and allow you to implement yoga into your daily life; after all, yoga is a way to live life.
An important point here, again, is to understand that this is my experience, and if you do not feel the need to find a teacher yet, that is totally fine. But if you feel ready for it, do not think twice, and remember, a great teacher is not somebody who will want you to be 100% dependable on them but someone who will instigate you to question yourself and the way you've been relating to yourself and others. They will teach you how to think and act for yourself.
So, I will finish this topic by saying once again that you do not need a teacher to guide you all the time, but that those moments spent with a teacher with whom you feel a connection will enrich your practice in a way that I cannot even describe with words.
Nowadays, with four years of practice, I know that I am still crawling on the traditions of Yoga and that this is a nonending path; I am so thankful for all the teachers who held the jewels of Yoga and are devoting their lives to spreading this sacred practice.
OM GURU OM
6. Take time to integrate your practices.
What I mean by that is, if a class that you decided to take is an hour-long, reserve 1h30 free on your schedule so that you have time to sit after practice and bring to mind, with the help of the heart, all that you felt on the body.
This action has allowed me to notice so many changes, and I will share them with you right now.
After class, I take notes of the pranayama, meditations, mudras, mantras, myths, yoga philosophies, and asanas taught in class and write them down to integrate the whole thing.
I think about the postures:
What did I experience in this practice?
Which asana was challenging/pleasurable?
What feelings were triggered by it?
What helped me get out of discomfort and find my center?
And the biggest question: How can I apply what I learned on the mat to my life?
When you take the time to analyze and integrate your practice, you start to build a library in your brain where you notice more feelings and sensations and memorize the shapes, transitions, names, and the whole flow. I consider this step a crucial part of building a home practice and a great starting point for tapping into the self-knowledge life-long path.
7. Practice with presence and intention.
Stepping on your mat with a firm understanding of why you are there is a crucial part of the practice.
“You are what your deepest desire is. As your desire is, so is your intention. As your intention is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.”
Bringing an intention into your mat will transform your yoga asana practice and your life. When you start your practice, be aware that this is your time to connect with yourself, with your breath, and with your heart. Choose any other intention that resonates better, but get intimate with why you decided to practice that day. This action will help you release anything that keeps you from connecting deeper with yourself and your desires.
Closing
As I said in the beginning, when trying to build something new, be aware that it might take a couple of tries until you figure out what path works best for you, and that is the beauty of it.
All these steps that we went through were developed over four years of practice, so be loving and kind to yourself. Know that it will take time to build your home practice, but it is possible, and all the fruits you will harvest from it are definitely worth the effort.
So, if there's one last tip I can give you, just pick one to start. Most importantly, HAVE FUN!
I hope this article supports you on your journey!
If you have any other steps that you used to build your yoga practice at home, I'd love to hear about it 😊
Stay well!
Love,
Fernanda Santos
