Building Your Home Practice

Building a consistent home practice can be challenging,

but also immensely rewarding....

An article in the magazine, "Svadhyaya, Volume 3, issue 2" gave many wonderful tips in regards to building a home practice.  I will give a few here, but you can read the full article yourself if you want by clicking on the link above to the Iyengar Yoga Center Hong Kong.  At their site, click the link to "magazine" at the top.

Start by asking yourself why you started yoga in the first place.  You may be surprised to realize that the reason you continue to do a yoga practice now is not the same reason that you first started.  I myself started "doing" yoga in my early twenties because I was very tight in many places from running, biking, aerobics and swimming and thought this would be a great way to get more flexible.  Little did I know that gaining flexibility is just a bonus to everything else yoga has taught me.

A home practice is a vital component of studying yoga and is an experience not just learnt through books or by coming to class.  Creating a personal practice helps you to develop in your life.

Yoga Sutras state three requirements of studying yoga - Kriya Yoga
1. Tapas - zeal or drive
2. Svadhyaya - self study
3. Isvara Pranidhana - devotion to the essence of life itself

When you begin to bring all three aspects into your practice and start seeing and feeling the benefits of yoga, then the time to practice more and more becomes available.  You make it a priority.  These three aspects of course encompass the eight limbs of astanga yoga, where we learn to go from the physical aspect of yoga to the more internal aspects of yoga.  One should feel an evolution and involution in their yoga practice.

So, how to start your home practice?  Well, just start.  Begin with 10-15 minutes a day and see how it builds.  A class can help to keep you on track, help you keep coming back to your own mat daily.  I have a few links on this blog with morning and evening sequences that might help get one started.  From there you will begin to feel what is right for you to do next.

To end, a quote from Chris Saudek

When you start to practice on your

own, you need to become your own

teacher and really look at yourself.

Namaste.
Pamela Nelson
www.plnyoga.vpweb.com