Personal Yoga Practice: the Unexpected Missing Ingredient for Great Results

You don’t have to have years of experience or teacher training behind you to practice on your own. A few principles can give you initial confidence that then grows as you meet yourself on the mat.

Principle 1: Arc of practice

In your practice, you will always begin with “meeting yourself” on the mat: breath, gently move, and check-in. Ideas for this portion:

• Mini-salutations: Breathe and reach overhead, drawing light down and into your heart

• Cat - Dog

• Check in with yourself

End your practice with integrating, soothing postures. Stay within your allotted time — this is an agreement with yourself that it’s important to keep as it will keep you coming back day after day when you learn you can trust yourself. I nearly always conclude active practice with Bridge — Fish — Twist — Savasanahhhhh! Yin and Restorative with a short twist and Savasana. I like having a series that I rely on: it signals my whole body-mind that we’re coming to the end and turning inward. These poses are also terrific at resolving multiple forces in your body.

What to do in the middle?

Every pose in yoga is a combination of Backbends, Forward Folds and Twists, multiplied by Standing, Sitting Inverting and Laying down. These are the basic units of movement and generate the myriad postures of yoga and their variations.

These are very basic but good introductory guidelines — be guided by your needs, experience, and individual resources.

• Backbends, in general, are energizing and uplifting.

• Forward folds, in general, are calming and inward-turning.

• Twists, in general, are activating and can be releasing.

• Standing postures, in general, are activating, strength-building, and focusing.

• Seated postures, in general, are grounding, and can be activating or calming. Most people, especially in the beginning, require the practice of standing postures first. If your knees rise above your hip bones when sitting on the floor, you will round through the low back, causing fatigue and strain: elevate your sitting bones on a blanket or block.

• Inverted postures, in general, are integrating. They can literally change your perspective. The strong inversions (head, hand, and shoulder stand) should only be embarked on with a teacher. Legs up the wall is a great yin or restorative posture available to most and deeply regulating. Bridge, Down Dog, and Dolphin Dog are also accessible inversions which can pave the way for the stronger inversions.

• Prone postures, in general, cultivate core and back strength and are concentrating. Plank and its variations as well as Cobra and Locust are examples.

• Supine postures, in general, (not pictured) are integrating. A great example is Hand to Foot Pose. Somewhat restful for being supine, the leg is used as a weight and the different positions require different core integrations. Supine L Pose is a core integration with the back, especially with arms lifted overhead.

Counterpose

Yoga proceeds by counterpose: every pose is nearly or very nearly followed by its counter or opposite. Sided poses, like many standing poses, are their own counter. Backbends can be countered by Forward Folds or Twists. Forward Folds are best countered, for most people, by Backbends. Twists are their own counter, but benefit from being broken up by Backbends or Forward Folds.

That makes the arc of practice — which is the arc of story, of ritual, of life — look like this:

Putting it All Together

Your beginning and end are going to be relatively standard, Read more…