May Newsletter: Tools For Practicing Yoga At Home
Greetings friends!
Happy May! I hope you're all staying strong and staying positive! If your mind is feeling restless, distracted or overwhelmed, meditation is a powerful tool for creating a peaceful, stable mind. I have a growing collection of free 20-min breathwork & meditation that you can access here.
With everything going on in the world right now, what is your single biggest challenge right now when it comes to your yoga practice? If you have fallen off your practice, what do you feel is holding you back? What would help you feel empowered it growing and maintaining your home practice? Please email me your response to one or all of these questions for a special gift :-)
The home practice is a rich tradition of Hatha Yoga. With connections to lineages of Tantra, sadhana, Sanskrit word for "daily spiritual practice," is the practice we create in our sacred space--our homes. Yet, for many of us "householders," maintaining a home practice is very difficult, and for good reason.
While being at home is comforting and grounding, home can also be distracting and uninspiring. Going to practice at a yoga studio is often described as "going to church" for many, so it's understandable that having that same feeling about practicing at home may fall flat to start. However, having a home practice allows us to discover that we have to power to create our own sacred spaces for self-healing & self-inquiry. The classical yogic text The Hatha Yoga Pradipika says:
This description of the yoga hermitage as prescribed by the siddhas for the hatha yoga practitioners. The room of sadhana should have a small door, without window, hole or cracks, being neither too high nor too low. It should be spotlessly clean, wiped with cow manure and free from animals or insects. Outside there should be an open platform with a thatched roof, a well and a surrounding fence. The appearance of the hermitage should be pleasant. (1.13)So, while some of the suggestions in this sloka may be archaic, such as cleaning the home with watered-down cow dung, the overall message of the text remains; the yogi's sacred space should be modest, clean and pleasant.
In my home, my "yoga hermitage" is my living room in front of my bookshelf, where all of my amazing yoga texts, my singing bowls & my koshi chimes live. I have just the right piece of furniture to organize & store my yoga props This little corner in my house is just the right space for me to practice, clean daily & feel comfortable. If you've been joining in on any of my live-streaming classes then you've probably seen that my sacred space is just a simple corner in my home.
We all have simple corners in our home that we can practice, whether that be a bedroom, a kitchen, a dedicated yoga room or a hallway. The following tips can help you develop your home yoga practice.
Practice at the same time every day: Create a regular daily habit for your body to become accustom to in order to train your daily rhythm.
You can practice for as long as you want: Sometimes you can practice for 2 hours! Sometimes your practice may need to be 15 minutes.
Include meditation in your daily practice: Even just 5 minutes of breath observation can be powerful.
Keep it simple: You don't have to have a fancy, technically advanced practice. Experiment with new postures and pushing your edges, but let the bulk of your practice be approachable and accessible to your everyday abilities.
Memorize the sun salutation sequence: Surya Namaskara is a foundational flow in vinyasa yoga styles. As you memorize the sun salutation, you can start experiment with intuitively building your own vinyasa flow, just make sure to keep a steady breath, and remember to flow through both left & right side!
Attached is a video teaching you the classical sun salutation from the Shivananda lineage. It's approximately 15 minutes comprising 6 full rounds of surya namaskara. Please accept this video as a love offering to help empower your home practice!
WEEKLY LIVE-STREAMING YOGA CLASSES
Practice with me in the comfort & sanctuary of your own home! Join me for live-streaming yoga classes via ZOOM. These live-streaming classes are available as a part of affordable membership package available on my website.
PLUS drop-in class payments on my website.
Scroll down for me Weekly Live-Streaming Zoom Class Schedule (CST/GMT-5)
Monday:
2pm Community Meditation & Sangha (45 min)
Tuesday:
9:30am Bhakti Vinyasa
Thursday:
9:30am Bhakti Vinyasa
Fridays:
9:30am Restorative
2pm Hatha-Vinyasa
Saturday:
9:30am Bhakti Vinyasa
YOGA VIDEO LIBRARY
Practice when you have time. These pre-recorded classes are now available through an affordable monthly membership to empower your home practice. New videos added weekly.
Classes include:
Bhakti Vinyasa
Energetic Vinyasa
Hatha-Vinyasa
Restorative Yoga