Yoga Tips for Beginners: Where Do I Start?

Yoga with Heidi Pfleger

The idea of starting to do yoga, attending a class and doing bendy poses can be intimidating but it doesn’t need to be. Everyone has a starting point in their journey of yoga and EVERY BODY is different, which makes participation in yoga allinclusive.

Yoga is, essentially, all about learning more about yourself and getting your ego out of the way It’s also about stilling your mind It’s hard to do, much less enjoy, a practice when you’re in your head and constantly criticizing yourself for the poses that you can’t do and/or are wondering if you are doing things ‘right. ’ I struggled for years with doing the ‘perfect practice,’ and often wondered if I was doing things ‘right ’ Needless to say, while I did get a great deal out of doing the poses, I wasn’t always experiencing the peace and serenity one typically seeks from a yoga practice. Working with many teachers over the years and playing with my own practice eventually enabled me to enjoy my time on the mat. It has also deepened my level of calmness, self-acceptance and contentment

Yoga is, essentially, all about learning more about yourself and getting your ego out of the way. It’s also about stilling your mind.

Here are a few tips to help you start your yogic journey:

1. Approach your practice as if you were a child. This advice was a game changer for me and I think it is the most important tip. For years, I was taking myself and my practice too seriously. The result was that I was being too hard on myself. I would look at poses and think, “There’s no way I will ever be able to do this!” Needless to say, I felt more discouraged than joyful with such a mindset. Children don’t typically think that way. They see a pose and try it. Their genuine curiosity exceeds their fear or feelings of inadequacy If they can’t do it, they try again and usually laugh when they flounder My practice dramatically changed when I lightened up like a child and made my practice playful

2. Keep your practice short and simple. Set aside a realistic time for yourself and start off with just a few poses to get familiar with. Ten to twenty minutes is usually realistic for most people and working on just a few poses won’t leave you feeling overwhelmed. You may even find, if you keep things short and simple, that you will end up doing thirty or forty minutes of yoga. That equates to progress!

3. Watch some yoga videos. There are tons of videos on Youtube geared for beginners and many of them are less than half an hour.