Multi-tasking during your yoga practice (i.e., watching television or listening to talk radio or other audios) can undermine your ability to receive maximum results and benefits of your practice. From my experience, except for playing soothing background music or nature sounds, it's best to avoid all distractions. When you practice yoga, your entire focus should be on the particular pose and how you breathe and feel as you hold and stretch your body.
Nevertheless, it is possible to combine a few yoga exercises or poses (note: a FEW) and still derive maximum benefits. One of my old yoga books, Yoga for Beauty and Health, suggests that when you do certain yoga techniques such as the Shoulder Stand, which you typically hold for 2-3 minutes, you can add another technique such as eye movements.
Don’t automatically think this is “a sacrilege!” While your body is inverted with your legs straight above you in the air for several minutes, it is very easy to visualize a clock right above your head (since you are looking upward anyway) and do the staccato eye movements around the face of the clock without taking any energy or focus away from your shoulder stand.
I have tried this and found it effective. I also combine the facial yoga technique, the Lion, in which you open your eyes wide and stick out your tongue as far as you can, while holding the Knee and Thigh Stretch and the Backward Hand Clasp. These are holding techniques that can be combined without taking any focus away from either one. So, yes, I believe that you can combine a few yoga exercises and make the most of your practice time without sacrificing the intensive focus required for optimal results.
Wisdom of the Day: To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends (Samuel Johnson - 1750)...And daily mindful home yoga practice can lead to more joy in every area of your life (Laura Venecia Rodriguez - 2009).
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