Top 5 Tips to Jumpstart your Home Practice

We all want to, but it just doesn’t seem to get off the ground, or out of the bed. An essential pillar in yoga is congruence in heart and mind, thought and action. There is what Swami Dayananda Saraswati calls the ‘knower-doer split.’ I know I want a home yoga practice, I know it is good for me, I know I like it when done… the doer says “Mañana. Tomorrow.” Internal conflict is a seed that grows, as is establishing new patterns.

A home practice is a challenging pattern to put in place and support. Here I offer some brief tips to help catalyze and support. Of course the tips start from the place there is an assumption of a desire to practice in the first place. Whatever your stripe or tribe of yoga, Anusara, Iyengar, Flow, Glow, Cowabunga, whether seeking to practice meditation, pranayama or the postures… to feed that passion is a glorious thing.

1. There is only today, not tomorrow.
We come back jazzed from a retreat or class or workshop and think, ‘wow, I gotta do those series more often!… I’ll start next week.’ Or when I clear a new space, or get a new mat, or finish this thing at work. This week is just too full. There is only today; am I practicing, yes or no? Granted once a routine is in place, if erratically then helping make the next morning’s practice is a sure unhindered thing comes next.

2. Remove all obstacles; lose interest in your excuses.
Obstacles internal and external are irrelevant and an abdication of will and choice. Set up a nice space the night before. Post a list of poses, sequences, notes from class on the wall the night before, so there is no ‘hmm what should I practice today?’ Use a timer. Plan monthly cycles: first week standing poses, second week backbends, third week twists, fourth week forward bends with inversions practiced throughout. Outhink your mind before it gets to can’t.

3. Practice what is being taught as it is being taught.
For a long period I start classes a certain way to help support learning through repetition and to offer various practice starting sequences over time. I often get questions at the end of class asking what to practice at home, and usually my first response is what was just learned. So yes, it would be a good idea to start practice waking up the legs in upavista konasana with a block behind to wake up the chest, the heart and upper spine. The pose and set up alone are not enough, one must retain the action taught. Legs must be working to support upper body lifting, and not to persist of lower back is not lifting and the legs can’t hold the weight rather than the spine. We used to make notes after class immediately, while fresh, before changing or right outside, quick sketches and notes for actions and props to spark the memory later. Tomorrow.

4. Weave yoga practice into existing routines.
In dialog with students once about practice one person said “It’s so much easier for me to get up for a walk than it is to practice yoga.” So get up 15 minutes earlier, or trim your walk a bit and do some yoga when you get back in. Start nibbling a space to fit it in. If you have a pattern of something you do for yourself already you’re most of the way there. Start weaving in your practice to what you already do.

5. There is no doing it wrong.
As Master Yoda says “Do or do not. There is no try.”
Either we are doing or not doing. Either we are doing our best to be mindful in iterative refinement of action in the body each breath, each moment – or at that moment mind was elsewhere. And we notice. And come back to now, in the body and breath. The refrain of “I’m afraid of doing it wrong” or “It just isn’t like in class” is just not relevant. See Top Tip number two.

All we can do is our best, and that is always glorious.

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 18th, 2010 at 9:44 am. It is filed under All posts, Featured, Practice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.