How to Start a Daily Home Practice
The idea of starting a home practice is liberating, but in reality for most, it rarely becomes a reality. Meaningful intentions with less than desired outcomes. Here are three steps to get you headed in the right direction to begin your at home yoga journey.
First, make an appointment with yourself. Schedule time into your day to practice each day. Treat this as if it were any other important meeting, because you are important. If that time is not scheduled, something always comes up to distract or deter you from making it to your mat. Along with setting aside a specific time, carve out a special place to practice, somewhere you feel comfortable and at ease rolling out your mat. Creating a welcoming environment will inspire you to visit it more often.
Second, make realistic goals for yourself, especially when it comes to how much time to dedicate to your home practice. An hour a day would be wonderful, although in reality it is lucky to have ten minutes to yourself in the day. So, start with 10 ten minutes at first. Once that time becomes a daily habit, you can revisit your goal and increase the amount of time on your mat.
Third, keep it simple. Try to start with sun salutations and poses you know. I recommend starting with standing poses, next seated, then reclining. Always end with Savasana for at least three minutes to allow all that good energy to get absorbed by your body and mind.
As the routine begins to take hold, start to explore practices that target specific areas of the body; hips, shoulders, twists, hamstrings, inversions, or whatever area in your body feels it needs attention for that day. Keeping in mind you can always use online resources like the videos here on my website to help you with sequencing ideas. Practicing the same video more than once is helpful because as you become more familiar with the sequence you can work on developing your skill.
Yoga is called a practice. We get on our mats to explore our capabilities, to make mistakes, remember what felt good, learn from it, and move forward the next day. There are no shortcuts to achievement in yoga, we have to put in the work daily to feel the results down the road. Enjoy your journey.