A Commitment to YOUR Wellbeing: Personal Yoga Practice

Why Carve Out Specific Time for Your Personal Yoga Practice (PYP)?

Making your PYP non-negotiable is a bedrock self-care practice that can help with stress, strain, trauma, pain and enhance your well-being like nothing else in the world. Your “workout” could even be a part of this, but creating a practice, a ritual around and for this time deepens the benefits and will enhance your commitment as well.

What is PYP?

We used to call this “Home Yoga Practice” or HYP, but so much of yoga instruction is received these days at home via zoom that it make sense to change how we speak of what used to be HYP. HYP has always been meant to refer to a personal experience of yoga asana (shape), pranayam (breath), chant, meditation practice. Your Personal Yoga Practice is your opportunity to explore techniques and experiences you have from your classes, or from participating in led practice with a teacher. Your PYP/HYP is a time to be led by your body, your intuition, your plan if you choose to have one and engage with yourself as the teacher and container for your practice.

A Gift for Your PYP: Journal Your Way to the Poses and Techniques Best for Your Needs

What To Do:

Use this as an inspiration, a template or print it out and write on it daily - this is my personal journal page that I created several years ago for reflection in the morning. Well, there are more pages, tbh… but this is the beating heart of my day.

  1. Be honest with the time you have available. Part of keeping your Practice/Self-Care time on your schedule is being able to respect the commitment you make to yourself. While a 60-90 minute practice is great, it’s a problem to solve if you really only had 30 and will have to let other things slip. If you really have just 5, 10 or 15 minutes, honor that. Carving out even a minute some days is both a challenge and a triumph.

  2. Gratitude is a strong, grounding practice. If you were to do nothing else, this section would be worth it in how the regular practice will shift the rest of your day.

  3. Does it seem odd to write your agenda on your yoga practice planner? No more! YOUR yoga practice is for YOUR day. It’s been a long time since I’ve practiced the same thing every day - decades. Some mornings I embrace my familiar Sun Salutations, others I really just need some TLC for my neck. Still others Yin fits the bill or Yoga Nidra or Restorative. You get the idea. Knowing what your day is likely to demand of you is the start of reflecting on the resources you’re here to cultivate.

  4. What are the feelings and qualities you need in order to show up for everyone and thing you will encounter today? Are you low on stamina? Need an infusion of energy or just to remember that you really are enough? Write this here - 2-5 feelings or qualities are plenty.

  5. What are the asana (shape), pranayama (breath practices), chants, prayers, meditations or other techniques that create these feelings for you? A back bend, an inversion and bumble bee breath? Great! Write those down!

  6. Finally, either go straight to your mat or if you’d like doodle or list a plan: Will you practiced in an engaged style with Standing Postures and the like? Or is it a Yin or Restorative Day? What counterposes will you use for that backbend, and what versions are calling to you? Is it a Legs Up the Wall Inversion Day or a Shakti Kicks and Headstand Day?

  7. Always remember Savasana and then take notice of the difference it makes in your day!

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