Beginning my morning with the alternate nostril breath helps me transition gently from sleep to activity.
If you are starting to learn yoga, I recommend that you carefully evaluate your daily schedule to select a time that best lends itself to consistent practice. In other words, identify a time that you naturally gravitate toward and that will be subject to the fewest distractions.
Some people find it easiest to practice during the lunch hour. Others prefer the late afternoon or early evening. People in a third group, like myself, prefer doing yoga in the morning, shortly after awakening and before beginning work or other commitments requiring time and attention. I encourage you to do what works best for you!
However, that said, I believe a morning practice has significant advantages over other times of the day. As Tias Little, yoga instructor and author of the new book,The Yoga of the Subtle Body, points out in his article, "Rise then Shine," in the December 2013 issue of Yoga Journal, "The first hour of the day is precious, and for centuries, yogis have cherished the dawn for personal practice: meditation, building their prana, and opening their bodies with the rising sun."
Little further explains that his morning practice helps him to tune into himself. Like a "meterologist who observes the external atmosphere", Tias says his yoga practice sets up a process of "inner listening" which enables him to observe the changing atmosphere within himself. Consequently, Tias' morning yoga practice enables him to begin his day more awake, attuned, and alert.
I find that my weekly morning regime of awakening, doing the alternate nostril breathing technique (as shown in the photo above) and meditating offers a gentle, soothing way of transitioning from sleep into the activities of my daily life. After breathing and meditating, I either move into my yoga poses or I jump on a mini-trampoline for 25 minutes and then do yoga.
By the time I have completed these different phases of my morning schedule, I feel fabulous and ready to go to work and tackle my tasks with maximum energy and clarity.
Another advantage of an early morning practice (assuming that if you live with others, that you complete your regime before your family or housemates wake up) is that your distractions and interruptions should be minimal. Unless you have international work that requires taking phone calls from the different time zones across the globe, I would ask, how many of your friends or colleagues call you at 5 or 6 am? Not many, I would guess.
And yes, I can hear some of you right now exclaim, "But, I'm just not a morning person!"
My rebuttal would be that I think you can become a morning person if you choose.
In my 20s, I did not initially consider myself a morning person. I had done yoga at night during high school and during college I varied my yoga practice times because so much was going on.
However, after college and by my mid-20s when I made a commitment to myself to exercise daily for the rest of my life, after a few months of doing yoga and jogging in the late afternoon or early evening, I made a change.
Despite the initial difficulty of waking up earlier in the morning to exercise, after a few months, the early hours of the day became my "prime" time. Once I began practicing in the early morning, I no longer missed a practice because of an invitation to dinner or habby hour.
From that point forward, I discovered that if I wanted to create a positive habit like yoga or anything else, I had to schedule it for the morning before I began my work of the day.
In summary, practice yoga when it best suits you. However, realize that a morning regime seems hard to beat for setting an energizing tone for your day in which you are fully awake, alert, and attuned, and for maintaining a consistent practice!
Yours for considering the advantages of a morning yoga practice!
Laura Venecia Rodriguez, the Beginner's Yoga at Home Coach
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