Are You a Class Goer or a Practitioner?
Yoga is a transformational practice. But it only has the power to transform you if you practice.
Your home practice does not have to look like a yoga class that you take. In fact, it shouldn’t. In a public, drop-in yoga class you are at the whim of the teacher who is trying to keep everyone safe, keep everyone happy and who may have their own issues with certain poses. You may not be working on what you need to.
If you only go to class, then yoga is just another form of exercise and you may be frustrated by a lack of progress.
To make progress, you have to do that same thing at least 2 to 3 times a week.
This is where a home practice comes in.
Developing a home practice is easy. All you have to do is pick something you want to see some improvement in and work on it.
One of my students has difficulty feeling where their feet are and what they are doing. She decided, for her home practice that she was going to start with the foot massage that I’ve shown in class. This is a great place to start and we’ll see where it leads them. Here is a video of a practice that I told her to do.
Don't worry about doing things wrong, you most certainly will. However, one caution here: ask you teacher about what you want to work on and why. I’ve had students who wanted to work on improving their wrist flexibility for Urdhva Dhanurasana (Wheel) because their wrists hurt. For most people who experience wrist pain in Wheel, it is not their wrists flexibility that they need to improve. It is almost certainly either their hips or shoulders.
In this picture my arms are not vertical, this creates an acute angle at my wrists. Ouch! My wrists hurt, but they are not the problem.
In this Urdhva Dhanurasana my arms are more vertical. My wrists are at 90 degrees and they don’t hurt.
Once at home, on your mat, you will be surprised at how you won’t be able to remember the instructions for poses that you do very frequently like Trikonasana (Triangle). This is a good thing because it will teach you to pay attention more carefully the next time that pose is done in class. This will lead to deepening your practice.
One of the most important things about starting a home practice is to roll out your mat and start with something.
I love this story I read in one of my yoga books about how one student started a home practice. When he got home from work he used to watch an hour of the Simpsons. He made a deal with himself that, no matter what, when he watched that TV show, he would roll out his mat and do yoga for one hour. It was only a matter of time before he got more interested in what was happening in his body and the TV show became more of a distraction that he turned it off and just practiced.
If you roll out your mat, something will happen.