How to Do Yoga at Home

While attending instructor-led yoga classes outside of your home can be wonderful, it may be difficult to find the time and money to join a yoga studio. Whether you have financial or time constraints or you just prefer to exercise your mind and body at home, you can begin, establish, and stick to a successful at-home yoga routine that can support your mental and physical health.
Part 1 of 5: Planning Your Yoga Practice

1

Set your intention. The first step in initiating yoga practice is deciding why you want to practice yoga. Yoga can be a method of physical exercise, a way to reduce and manage stress, a means of healing an illness or injury, or a path to complete fulfillment and peace.

• Think about which components of wellness you want to work on, such as strength, flexibility, stamina, anxiety, depression, etc.
• Consider writing down your intentions (in just a few words) and keeping it near you when you practice. Refer back to it before and after your yoga practice.

2

Gather the materials you will need. At a minimum, you will need a yoga mat. You may also need a Mexican blanket to use as a bolster, a yoga block, and yoga belts.^[1]

• Mats can be bought at sporting goods stores, yoga supply shops (often inside yoga studios), or online.
• Other supplies, such as the Mexican blanket and yoga block, can be substituted for household items like other blankets and stacks of books.

3

Make time for yourself. Make sure all phones are turned off or unplugged, no one is coming over, and everyone in your household is either not home or occupied. Be clear that this time is for you and you should not be disturbed except in an emergency.

• Many yoga classes are 60-90 minutes, but you may not be able to make that much time. Even 20 minutes can be enough to have meaningful practice.
• If you have children, try to find someone to keep them while you do your yoga practice, do yoga during their naps, or even consider inviting the kids do yoga with you!

4

Prepare your yoga space. Make sure you have enough floor space to move forward, backward, left, and right without running into or hitting anything. If you don't already have this space, you may need to clear out some clutter. If you want, you can add to your atmosphere by lighting candles or burning incense.

5

Decide how often you want to practice. Setting a regular practice schedule can help you hold yourself accountable for your practice and keep other people used to giving you your scheduled yoga time. Ideally, you should practice every single day, but even practicing once per week can help.

• You may also start one to three times per week and then build up towards doing yoga every day. Set goals for yourself that are attainable.

Part 2 of 5: Learning About Yoga

1

Go to a yoga class. Most yoga studios or gyms will let you try one class for free. If you don’t know much about yoga, or if it has been a long time since you have been to a yoga class, try attending one or two classes. This can help you develop a yoga regimen for your home practice.

• After the class, try to write down the poses (don’t be afraid to draw pictures for yourself) so that you remember what you did.
• Ask the instructor if they have any tips or suggestions for a brief home practice. Many instructors will be encouraging and will understand if you can’t make it to class frequently.

2

Read about yoga. If you are practicing yoga for mindfulness especially, reading about the goals of yoga and tips for integrating and separating mind and body can really help you focus your practice.

3

Use beginner yoga videos. There are a wide variety of video-based yoga courses available. You may consider purchasing yoga DVDs for your home practice, which will offer a basic guided yoga practice for you to follow. You may also search online for yoga videos or courses that guide you through increasingly complex yoga practice.

• Select a video or course that corresponds with your personal yoga goals.^[9] If your goal is to burn fat and lose weight, you might want to find a fast-paced yoga flow video. If your goals are meditation and mindfulness, you may want to find a Hatha yoga video.
• Feel free to mute the video once you have done it a few times. You might want to glance at it occasionally for guidance, but you can always play your own music and turn your attention inward.

4

Structure your practice well. Regardless of how you learn to approach yoga, you may notice that the structure of most yoga practice is the same.^[10]

• You should start your practice with a short meditation and breathing exercise to calm your mind and center your thoughts.^[11]
• After centering and setting your intention for your practice, warm up with floor poses.^[12]
• Move from floor poses to standing poses, then progress through back bends, twists, forward bends, and reclining poses.
• Always end your practice with a final relaxation pose.

Part 3 of 5: Executing Beginner Poses

1

Begin with floor exercises. Common floor exercise for a warm-up usually begins with sitting cross-legged with your hands resting on your knees and your eyes closed, taking deep breaths.

• Take a few deep breaths while sweeping your arms out and up, then putting your palms together and pulling them down to heart center (palms together in front of your chest).
• Transition to hands and knees and do a few cat/cow transitions to warm up. Cat pose is done by arching your back up with the top of your head reaching towards the floor. Cow is done by sinking your belly towards the floor, pushing your tailbone up, and looking up as far as possible, stretching the front of your neck.
• Transition from your floor work to standing to continue your practice.

2

Master a handful of common poses. You do not have to be able to do every yoga pose in existence to have an effective home practice. Mastering a few simple poses^[13] and executing them well is the key to establishing a beginner home practice. Here are instructions for a few common poses:

• Downward-facing dog: Begin standing at the top end of your yoga mat with your feet shoulder-width apart. Bend over, plant your hands on the outsides of your feet, and step back, one foot at a time, towards the back of your mat. Your body will be in an upside-down V shape. Keep your palms flat on the ground and try to keep your feet flat on the ground. Drop the weight of your head and allow it to move towards the ground.
• Mountain Pose: Stand at the top of your mat with your feet shoulder-width apart. Your arms should be by your sides, palms facing out. Be very still, feel grounded, and focus your vision on a point in front of you.
• Tree Pose: Stand at the top of your mat with your feet shoulder-width apart. With your hands at heart center (palm to palm in front of your heart), transfer your weight to one foot and slowly move the other foot up to rest on the leg of the grounded foot. You can place the bottom of your foot against your ankle or your knee. To intensify the pose, move your arms up and out into a joyous Y above you.
• Camel pose: while on your knees, arch your back so that your heart and your chest are open forward. With your feet flexed and your toes grounded, reach back and hold your ankles with your hands, and let your head fall back to stretch your neck.
• Warrior 2: do a deep lunge, with the forward knee straight above the ankle and the foot facing the wall in front of you. The back leg should be extended with the leg straight and the foot sideways, perpendicular to the forward foot. Extend both arms out in the directions of your legs and look forward, over your extended arm and forward foot. Be sure to alternate sides.
• Chair pose: stand with your feet flat on the floor, shoulder-width apart. Then sink down into a squat, as though you were going to sit in a chair. Be sure to keep your back completely flat. Raise both arms up over your head, shoulder-width apart, palms facing each other but not touching and fingers spread. Hold for several seconds, then stand up. Rest and repeat several times.

3

Do a bridge pose. Rounding out your yoga practice with a reclining pose can help seal in the benefits of your yoga practice. A bridge pose is done by laying on your mat with your knees up. Press your feet towards the ground slowly to raise your pelvis up off the floor.

• Your arms can stretched towards your feet, palm-down, or you can clasp your hands together under your back.
• This pose can be done as a rolling bridge, which involves slowly raising and lowering the bridge pose up and down.

4

Finish your practice with deep relaxation. Deep relaxation is one of the most important parts of your yoga practice.^[14] Be sure to save at least five minutes at the end of your workout for relaxation to allow your body to recuperate from your yoga practice. This can be done laying on your left side, laying flat on your back with your palms facing the ground, or with your legs up the wall.

Part 4 of 5: Deepening and Intensifying Your Yoga

1

Increase the duration of your practice. After you feel comfortable with your established yoga practice, try lengthening your practice by holding each pose a bit longer, adding more repetitions of each pose, and adding new, more challenging poses.^[15]

• Many yoga classes are 60-90 minutes, so you may aim to make your practice around that length.

2

Strengthen the intensity of your practice. You may want to strengthen the intensity of your practice as you become comfortable with your routine. This can be done easily by holding each pose a little longer and by challenging yourself to sink deeper into challenging poses.

• Poses that involve lunges or squats can be taken a bit lower (but don’t go too far and hurt yourself).
• You can increase or decrease the speed of transitions in flow yoga practice; either may create more intensity.

3

Increase the frequency of your practice. One of the best ways to deepen your yoga practice is to increase the number of days you practice. Ideally, you should practice 5-7 days per week.^[16] If you make yoga a part of your daily routine, its effects will permeate your life, and you will become healthier and more mindful.

4

Focus on both the mind and the body. If you started doing yoga with a single purpose—to become healthy or to find a mindful way to de-stress—try integrating another purpose into your practice. If you have been focusing on either the body or the mind, try to start focusing on the body and the mind together.

5

Attend an intermediate yoga class. Checking in with an instructor in a class once you’re ready to move from beginner to intermediate home practice can be the best way to be sure that you are practicing yoga correctly. Ensuring that you are doing each pose correctly can help prevent any strain or stress in your body.

Part 5 of 5: Maintaining Consistent Practice

1

Continue setting goals for yourself. As you meet your physical and mental health goals through regular yoga practice, continue challenging yourself and growing by setting new goals.^[18] You may even be able to find an online yoga community in which you can create healthy living pacts and share your goals and accomplishments.

2

Stress the importance of your practice to others. If your family, roommates, or friends are interfering with your time or ability to practice yoga, explain to them the reason you are adding regular at-home yoga to your life.^[19] Be very clear about why it is important to you, and be firm that they should allow you to practice self-care.

3

Find a yoga buddy. If you are having difficulty practicing yoga consistently, try finding a yoga buddy. You can do yoga with a friend, or you can simply check in with each other daily and encourage each other to practice yoga.

4

Keep a yoga practice journal. Write down all of your experiences and what's happening to your body and mind. Keep a record of what is working and what isn't, as well as how your practice is deepening, evolving, and helping you grow into a better person and learn more about yourself.

5

Be patient and stick with it. The benefits of yoga are too many to list here, but with a regular practice you will reap them all. Keep in mind that yoga is not about whether or not you can do a particular pose exactly like the person on a video or in a picture. It's about the journey towards the pose, enlightenment, or whatever your goal is. Keep an open mind and heart at all times.

(source: wikiHow)