Do you have a home practice? It is one of the things that helps you make progress in your poses.

The Yoga Sutras define 4 types of practitioners: mild, medium, intense and supremely intense.

A mild practitioner goes to class once or twice a week and never practices on their own. The see some immediate benefits of doing yoga, but they quickly plateau. They don’t think of yoga outside of their regular class. They mostly do it for the exercise.

To make real progress in your practice, you need to do some practice on your own. That moves you from a mild practitioner to a medium practitioner.

When you go to a yoga class, you are subject to the whims of the yoga teachers as to what you are working on. Your home practice is where you can work on things that you want to and need to improve on.

A medium practitioner goes to class a couple time a week, but occasionally rolls out their mat and plays with some things on their own. Maybe they want to be able to get up into handstand. They start to have questions about how to do things and maybe why they aren’t making progress.

To go from a medium to an intense practitioner you need to study with a teacher, not just take a class. You start to seek out specific teachers because you recognize their skill and expertise. You recognize that to open your hips or to improve your hamstring flexibility you may need to work on that one thing at least three times a week in order to make progress. You think about yoga and your alignment outside of class. You begin to get interested in the other limbs of yoga.

To become a supremely intense practitioner, you need to practice every day. You may still take a couple of classes a week, but there are things that you want to work on and explore. Yoga is no longer just about strength and flexibility of your body. It is also about the strength and flexibility of your mind. You are interested in the yoga philosophy and reading the ancient texts. You notice that there are many changes off of the mat. You know that your yoga is getting better because your life and your relationships are getting better. You don’t just do yoga. Yoga has become your lifestyle.

What level of practitioner are you? What are you working on in your own practice? Where are you stuck? What aspect of your practice do you want to improve? Let me know when I see you in class.