Being a Committed Yoga Student

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Getting started with Yoga is not hard. Yoga has brought health and peace of mind to millions of people for years. It can do the same for you. All you need is time, focus, and the right attitude.

Traditionally yoga is practiced 24 hours a day. Yes, yoga can be beneficial when only practiced with physical postures but you can unlock the real potency of yoga when you commit to a yogic lifestyle. This means living yoga and practicing it daily.

At a minimum, if you can apply the wisdom of yoga to your everyday life and live with awareness, you can reap immense benefits. This doesn’t have to mean a big lifestyle change. It can be simple adjustments in your daily schedule that make the biggest impact.

Some people can carve out regular yoga practice time in their daily schedules. Many others (like myself), find this impractical. I do try to attend classes a few times a week. Even if you don’t currently attend any classes (or practice at home), setting aside a bit of time in your weekly schedule can still introduce a bit of balance into a hectic lifestyle.

Sometimes if I’m in the office a a long spurt of time, I work in a few postures while sitting at my desk or breaking exercise while I’m driving home.

Allocation of Time to Practice

Ultimately how much time you allocate to your physical practice depends on your goals and lifestyle. The busier your are (like me) with work, chores around the house, and a bunch of kids, the less time you have available for yoga. Baby steps can be as simple as starting with 15 mins a day, two days a week. Try to work your way up to 30 minutes at a time.

Certainly if you have more free time, you can practice daily. The most important thing is to set a realistic goal for yourself so you don’t stress yourself out. That type of stress causes people to give up before they can enjoy any of the benefits.

At the end of the day, the amount of time that you dedicate to yoga is a personal choice. No need to feel guilty about your decision. Guilt is counterproductive and doesn’t really have a place in Yoga practice. The source of your happiness lies within you and only you know how much time you can set aside.

Yoga is about finding your own pace without pushing yourself. Leave your competitive spirit to other things.

What can you get out of yoga?

You get out of yoga what you put into it. What you get out of any endeavor is only as good as what you put in. Don’t expect something from anything. Just like you can’t get health from junk food or happiness from bad attitudes, you can’t get good results from a shoddy yoga practice.

Most traditional or tradition-centered approaches to Yoga share two basic practices which are the cultivation of awareness and relaxation.

• Awareness is the ability to pay close attention to something, to be consciously present, to be mindful. Yoga can be attention training.
• Relational is the conscious release of unnecessary and unwholesome tension in the body.
• Both awareness and relaxation go hand in hand in Yoga. Without bringing awareness and relaxation to Yoga, the exercises are merely postural poses, not yogic exercises.

Yoga has undergone multiple adaptations over the years. Today, yoga is practiced in a variety of ways. Yoga is frequently used for therapeutic purposes. Some people are actually trained in yoga therapy. Yoga therapy can address specific needs such as practitioners that have disabilities or ailments requiring special attention.

The Right Attitude

In Yoga, what you do and how you do it are equally important. Both mind and body contribute to your actions. Full mental participation in even the simplest of physical exercise enables you to tap into your deeper potential as a human being.

Yoga encourages you to examine all of your basic attitudes toward life to discover which ones are not serving you well. Then, you can replace those with more appropriate ones.

Wanna learn more about starting to practice yoga? Check out what to expect on your first yoga studio visit and what is yoga? I also love this Yoga for Beginners book.