Those who are new to yoga practice can often find it quite difficult to settle in. It feels like you have to learn a whole new language as well as learning to control and manipulate your body into the various poses, called “asanas”. Yoga is not just difficult for beginners, it’s also challenging for long-term practitioners. As one advances in yoga, the challenges change in their nature, but they are there nonetheless. Remember, the reality is that yoga is a “practice”, and you will get better in time. The following tips will allow you to begin to practice and understand more about yoga at home. So where do you practice?
You Need Your Space
It is vital to find a proper space to practice yoga. If you are starting at home you will have a small disadvantage in that you need to create a space for your practicing, where in a yoga studio, it is already done and the space is maintained for that only. A reasonable space should be set aside so that you are not going to have to keep adjusting the area around you all the time when you are trying to focus on your moves. There is some equipment that is also very useful to help you practice.
Yoga Mat
One piece of equipment that is very important to your successful practice of yoga is a yoga mat. This is to help support your efforts by preventing injuries from hard or rough surfaces, and will also give a comfortable and gripping surface for doing the poses. You don’t need much equipment for your yoga practice so don’t skimp out on the mat, get a high quality sticky one. Remember, you will probably be using it for years to come. It will make all your practice more successful.
Practice Relaxation
For the modern versions of yoga that most people practice, relaxation techniques are very important and need proper attention to get right. Daily practice will help you to get used to performing these correctly. You can get guidance from some of the many good yoga books available today.
Reading Feeds Your Mind
Reading is important in yoga to be successful, just as it is in any endeavour. Experts say that rising early and doing just one half hour of reading in your field of activity will at least double your level of achievement in your attempts. You will be getting some solid up to date ideas and inspiration when the progress seems slow, as is inevitable in any endeavour that requires discipline. Traditional yoga texts called Sutras and Shastras were written in the Sanskrit language.
Sanskrit – The Mother Of All Languages
You could study Sanskrit if you like, but be warned, it takes on average 12 years to get the grammar down, so don’t expect to be an expert in short order or you may be disappointed. There are many texts that you could study with a focus on Hatha yoga for the external movements, but they are limited in their understanding of the real higher purpose of yoga. According to the most learned and dedicated practitioners, to understand the topmost goals of yoga you will need to study the text called “Bhagavad Gita – As It Is” by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami. This text was written 5000 years ago in India in Sanskrit, and has the real detailed understanding of the yoga process from the highest level of understanding.
Don’t Forget To Breath
When doing Hatha yoga, it is important to take breaks to get your breathing to allow you to move on. The breathing process of yoga is technically called “Pranayama”, and is in fact a separate rung of the yoga ladder that comes after Hatha, although most schools and authors today teach them together.
Sleep Well
Remember to get a good nights rest each night when practicing yoga. As the old saying goes; “early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise”. The reason that good rest is important is that it allows the intelligence to become stronger and clearer, and this is vital to good yoga. In the Bhagavad Gita it is explained that “one cannot be a yogi if he eats too much or eats too little, sleeps too much or does not sleep enough”.
Be Positive
Negative thoughts will cloud your mind and spoil your progress. One needs to continue with an attitude of expecting success, to make progress. As all advancement in purifying our consciousness through yoga is based on divine inspiration, we need to positively expect to get this mercy, and wait patiently for it.
These tips should enable you to move forward more easily in your yoga practice if you apply them in your life. Good instruction is useless to a man who cannot “hear”, so please try to understand the higher meaning of yoga beyond the external poses. The purposes of the poses is to control the mind and ready it for the submissive reception of higher knowledge, they are not the goal in themselves. If your teacher or book is presenting the movements as the goal, then you have found what is called a “Bogie Yogi”, and they should be rejected for a better one.
