How To Start & Improve In Your Home Yoga Practice

Let me guess: You want a fulfilling home yoga practice, but every time you roll out your mat you find something else to do instead. Or maybe you don’t even have a yoga mat to begin with, which makes the idea of starting a home yoga practice confusing and daunting. Or even still, perhaps you have your mat, your props and time set aside, but picking which teacher and class to do is an overwhelming prospect. There are many challenges home yogis face when it comes to practicing at home. 

For many people, going to a yoga studio is much easier--it limits distractions, provides a soothing atmosphere and connects you to a yoga teacher that can provide real-time feedback. 

But going to a yoga studio isn’t always achievable or even desirable. For one thing, practicing at a yoga studio can get expensive very quickly. And then there’s the issue with scheduling--What if the neighborhood studio doesn’t have a class that matches your schedule, or it takes too long to drive there, or you have to battle parking once you arrive. For many, practicing yoga in a group setting is not an entirely comfortable prospect either, especially for those who are brand new to yoga. Depending on the class and teacher, the sequencing may not be appropriate for all bodies, and/or students are not encouraged to go rogue and try new things on their own. And what if the class ends up not being something you like, either because of the movement offerings or because of the messaging? You can’t just walk out of a studio class the same way you can turn off a yoga video at home. 

When we rely too heavily on studio experiences, we can start to feel like our practice is dependant on someone else initiating it, which may leave us feeling disempowered, uncreative or out of luck when we can’t get to the studio. 

For these reasons, many people choose to augment their studio practice with home yoga, and many more people choose to practice exclusively at home. Practicing at home opens the possibilities for how often we can practice, what durations of time we can practice for, and how creative we can get with generating our own movement experience. 

For the first seven years of my own practice, I practiced exclusively at studios. I relied heavily on the sequencing of my teachers, and felt uninspired and uncreative when I tried to roll out my mat at home. These days, I regularly practice yoga at home and augment my practice with studio classes once or twice a month, which lets me touch base with teachers, ask questions and receive real-time feedback on my successes and challenges. 

And so, if starting or growing a home yoga practice is an exciting proposition for you, I’m here to lay out the fundamentals of getting started and improving over time, which are two of the biggest pain points I hear when people express their interest and disinterest in practicing yoga at home. 

Setting Up Your Home Yoga Space

You don’t need much to start practicing yoga at home. You basically need a you-sized space where you can move your limbs easily in all directions without bumping into anything. You don’t even need a yoga mat if you choose to practice on carpeted floors (hopefully clean carpeted floors). 

Some people enjoy thoroughly curating their yoga space with candles, scents (such as burning palo santo wood), images and other items that make the space inviting and free from distraction.

My own personal preference is to embrace the distraction of home life--the laundry, the to-do list, the mailman at the door, etc. I like my yoga to feel like it’s part of my home life rather than a separate event that requires preparation and ritual. I like to keep my mat sprawled out on the floor, props strewn about, in the room I spend the most time in (my living room). For me, this provides a continuous invitation to step on my mat, whether I carve out a full 60 minutes for practice, or a simple 5-10 minutes of movement before running on an errand. 

The more casually I create my space, the more I find myself taking advantage of my movement opportunities. It’s not a big deal, it’s just yoga. And if we’re expecting company or it’s time to clean the house, everything can be bundled up and put aside in less than five minutes. We’ve devoted the storage in our ottomans to all of our yoga gear, making it so that if you come visit us, you may not even know that we practice yoga at home at all! 

For anyone serious about taking up a home yoga practice, you will eventually find yourself wanting a few items that can assist in the growth of your practice over time, including a yoga mat and props. For a full list of props and their function, visit our prop guide (which also contains a handy shopping list!). You can equip yourself with everything needed for around $60, a one-time cost that is less than a one-month studio membership in most cases. 

Here’s what you may find yourself wanting over the course of your home yoga practice:  

• Yoga mat ~$20-$120 

• 2 yoga blocks ~$8-20 each

• 1 yoga strap ~$10 

• 1 yoga blanket ~$15 

• Optional but awesome: 1 yoga bolster ~$90

Starting a Routine & Choosing Your Classes

Once you have your space selected and your gear ready, the next challenge awaits. How many times have you rolled out your mat at home, carved out the time to practice, but instead found yourself answering emails, browsing social media or running off to take of a chore? I can say from my own experience that this happens to me on a regular basis. 

Home is home. It feels like home. It smells like home. It has all the responsibilities of home. And this can be quite distracting when it’s time to do some yoga, especially because yoga can be quite challenging. 

Finding the time and space to do yoga at home may be quite easy, but actually starting a practice can be the difficult part. Here are my tips. 

1. Establish a routine. Any routine. An arbitrary routine. It can be first thing when you wake up, the last thing before bed, straight away when you get home from work, during the kiddo’s naptime, etc. Decide on a more-or-less regular time that you can devote to moving your body and improving your intelligence. My own routine involves either setting aside a full 45-90 minutes to practice all ranges of motion, or setting aside a few 15-30 minute chunks throughout the day. I like to start my day with movement and add in additional movement experiences when I feel my body has been still like a stiff puddle for too long. 

2. Decide what you are going to practice and for how long. Seasoned practitioners may choose to practice unguided. Social media fiends may choose to try out new routines from the movement experts they follow online. Beginners and studio lovers may enjoy guided classes on YouTube or paid platforms. Many YouTube teachers, including myself, put out free home classes every week, which provides students with fresh practice material for their week. My own routine includes practicing on my own a few times a week (usually to the soundtrack of talks given by my meditation and philosophy teachers), practicing along with my favorite YouTube classes a few times a week, and playing around on my mat when we’re watching TV in the evenings. 

When it comes to choosing classes online, it can be quite daunting due to the volume of content. I typically search for new teachers on social media, follow them to their YouTube channels, expose myself to their style for a few minutes, and then choose whether I want to practice with them tomorrow. Now that I’ve been practicing at home for a few years, I have my regular go-to teachers and classes--a handful of videos that I know work for my body and take me through a full range of motion. 

In the same way that you need to shop for your teachers at the local studio by taking a variety of classes, you have to shop for your teachers online by exposing yourself to a variety of videos. When you find a teacher that jives with you, take steps to move closer to them: Sign up for their newsletters, follow them across other platforms, comment on their videos. Forge meaningful connections with your online teachers the same way you would with a close real-life friend. This can help keep you motivated and provide you with the platform to check in with your teachers regarding questions you have about your practice or progress as you move forward. 

How To Tell If You’re Improving

Once you get through the first hurdles of practicing yoga at home, you may start to wonder what your improvement barometers are. After all, you don’t have a personalized guide in the room with you helping you understand the blind spots in your movement or why it’s better to do this, not that. 

While each of our barometers for success will be unique to us based on our goals, there are a few markers one should keep in mind for our home practice in order to assess whether we are on the right track for sustainable movement: 

• Does your body feel better after practice? 

• Are you continually moving in new ways according to the evolution of your understanding? (I.e. Is your practice a changing thing, or does it feel static and rote?) 

• Do you experience aches or pains as a side-effect of your practice? (If so, this is a sign to reach out to your teacher for personalized attention or head to your local yoga studio to practice in front of a seasoned teacher)

• Is your understanding of the yoga shapes and your body changing over time? 

• Are you working within and at the edge of your skill set? 

We all hit bumps in the road in our yoga practice. It’s natural. We have learned to move in a certain way to get through life, and many of our movement habits are not entirely functional. Our yoga practice is designed to educate us out of our conditioned habits through understanding and trial and error. For this reason, our yoga poses and how we approach our yoga poses changes over time. 

The first time we do a Warrior 2, we are likely moving our body according to yesterday’s habits. The 60th time we do Warrior 2, we have likely learned a bit more about our body’s capacity for external hip rotation, core engagement and shoulder stabilization, and are utilizing different muscles and bone positions to achieve the posture. The 200th time we do Warrior 2, we have likely accumulated lessons learned in regards to both how to and how not to engage the pose. Warrior 2 is never a static pose, it is always an opportunity to build sustainable movement habits and understand ourselves anew in this moment.  

Injuries are also a natural part of this process, whether you practice at home or at a studio. I have never met someone who practices yoga that has not, at one point or another, miscalculated a position and felt the effects afterwards. The fact is, we can’t get through life without injuries. But we can empower ourselves to react efficiently to our injuries and put ourselves in more educated positions to minimize the impact of potential injuries. 

The beauty of a home practice is that it is entirely customizable. When I practice with a YouTube teacher, I often find myself branching out from their recommendations and making the practice my own. This may be because I woke up with a weird crick in my neck, or my old hamstring injury is flaring up, or I don’t feel energized enough to practice the sequence as taught, or I saw something really cool on Instagram yesterday that I want to try out right now. 

Key Takeaways

Practicing yoga at home is a wonderful alternative or augmentation of a studio practice. Whereas a studio provides a calculated and curated movement experience, a home yoga practice can be tailored to your schedule, duration preferences, skill set, and more. Learning to practice yoga at home also empowers our home habits, which often consist of a lot of sedentary activities. 

For those who wish to start a home yoga practice and see functional improvements over time, here are the key takeaways from this article: 

1. Set up your yoga space in such a way that you feel interested and invited to practice at home. There’s no use in practicing if you’re not interested. 

2. Stock up on your homa yoga supplies, such as mats and props so that you are empowered to grow your practice. 

3. Establish a routine, find your online teachers and choose your classes prior to practicing. 

4. Check in with yourself regularly to ensure that your practice is on the right track. Ask yourself leading questions to determine if your new movement habits are sustainable. 

5. Injuries, setbacks and plateaus are a natural part of any skill. Address this by making your home practice your own, connecting with your online teachers and heading to the studio when necessary to receive real-time feedback. 

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