Top Tips For Yoga Beginners

It is much easier and more enjoyable to learn yoga, with all its detailed and subtle physical and mental aspects, from an experienced, qualified teacher.

You can find plenty of free videos on YouTube or apps that guide you through beginner poses.

Don’t push yourself to do anything that feels dangerous or wrong for you. This is ‘Ahimsa,’ the practice of non-harm, which is essential to the skillful and beneficial yoga method.

Be aware of contraindications relevant to your specific circumstances: for example, some poses are not to be practiced during early pregnancy, with particular injuries, or during menstruation, whereas other poses may be beneficial.

Look inwards to your progress; there will always be people who are more experienced than you. Yoga may be fashionable, but it is not a spectator sport or a competition. Appreciate the subtle progress of your practice, the best part of it is on the inside, in the healing awareness and unity of your own body, mind, and spirit.

Yoga is a quiet, focused activity, but we need not take ourselves too seriously. We may feel ungainly and stiff as a board as we try to navigate ourselves into new poses.

Humility, an inner smile, and a bit of gentleness can save us from pushing ourselves to the point of strain and injury.

It is advisable not to eat for one or two hours before yoga practice, drink only small amounts of water beforehand, and not drink during exercise. Avoid alcohol, sugar, or caffeine before yoga.

You will stretch your body in all directions, so you don’t want to wear anything that will dig in or restrict your movement.

At some point, you are likely to bend your body right over and also turn upside down, so it saves wriggling about or exposing more than you wish to if you wear stretch fit gear.

Little and often is more effective than occasional long sessions of yoga. Even 15 minutes a day of a few well-chosen poses can have a very positive effect on your physical, emotional and mental well-being. A regular discipline will reap more benefits. That way, the body begins to feel comfortable and familiar with the process and gradually becomes more flexible and subtly aware of the sensations, rather than ‘starting from cold’ again once in a while.

The perfect pose we may see in a book or see a teacher demonstrate may be a long way from what our own body can currently achieve. A good yoga teacher will show you how to ease your own body carefully towards the ideal posture, perhaps with the use of yoga props like extra blocks, bolsters, a belt, etc., bringing attention to the principle of the inner stretch or direction of energy that the pose is aiming to evoke in us.

Finish your practice with Shavasana, ‘Corpse pose,’ lying flat on the floor, resting, and consciously relaxing your body for five to 15 minutes. Please don’t rush out of it; get up very gently, rolling onto your right side and coming up to a sitting position in your own time.

You don’t have to buy a great deal to do yoga if you are a yoga beginner, but these yoga ‘props’ can be handy. A yoga mat especially is pretty essential to avoid slipping on floors.