Yoga at Home for Beginners: Trust Your Instincts First-Everyone's Body is Different

I share the above photo in one of the chapters of my book, Yoga at Home:  Gain Energy, Flexibility, and Serenity in 20-30 Minutes a Day because for me it epitomizes one of the myths that many people (not all, but still too many!) have about yoga - that you have to do challenging pretzel poses like this to be a real yogi and to benefit from yoga.

So untrue!  At least in my opinion. I have been benefiting from a regime of simple, gentle hatha yoga poses.  I doubt I could ever put myself into the above pose.  I don't have the upper body strength to do it. I also lack the coordination and finesse to wrap myself backward into such a pose. 

One of my regular blog readers recently shared a blog post by another yoga practitioner (www.egoyogini.blogpost.com) who shared her encounters with some less-than understanding and intuitive yoga instructors who assume that everyone can master yoga poses if they try hard enough, long enough or tuck their butt in enough.  Ecoyogini so correctly pointed out that our bodies all differ and not everyone can necessarily achieve every yoga pose - their bone structure may simply not allow it!   So true!  And she concludes that "each person should not strive to achieve an "external yoga ideal" but should find what yoga looks like for them."

I agree with such wisdom.  I advise, almost ad nauseum, that as you learn and practice yoga- be careful, be gentle with yourself, listen to your body. Always!  Never push, pull, or strain!  Accept what you can and cannot do in any given moment. For me what yoga looks like is a gentle heartfelt practice of exercising my body from the inside out in a relaxed, dreamlike way.  And, I can tell you the benefits have been wonderful!  No competition and no comparing!  Beginners - head this advice and you won't experience an injury!

Yours for listening to yourself while doing yoga,

 

Laura Venecia Rodriguez

 

Comments

[Tina]

Obviously, yoga should be practiced—and not performed—in a more sacred space than what was chosen ...

Nor should anyone who is interested in taking up yoga, feel that a certain body type, range of motion, or degree of youth or natural ability are prerequisites ...

http://gawker.com/5835022/

These are yoga teachers, who have probably done very little for yoga, and have possibly set it back a few decades ...

[kavin]

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[Laura Venecia Rodriguez]

Thanks again for sharing, Tina. Such horror stories of yoga classes. Guess there are bad apples everywhere! I do think that in the examples you gave, the instructors seem to have lost the entire point of yoga!

[Tina]

Here is another article, a little more recent - because not everyone studies the same style (Ashtanga) as does Ecoyogini:

http://blisstree.com/move/yoga/listening-to-my-body-instead-of-my-bullying-yoga-teacher/

Article points up to the fact that there is a bit of a backlash and commercialized yoga is about to jump its own shark - as in, if you can't teach anything new, then just be a throwback to the aerobics drill sergeants of the '80s in America ...

The thing is, yoga is not aerobics. I would never think to teach yoga, not back then and not now that it's too-trendy, but I HAD entertained the idea of teaching step aerobics ...