How to Learn Yoga at Home

When I first became curious about yoga a number of years ago, I felt torn. Yoga intrigued me and I wanted to to learn more, to try yoga for myself and reap both the physical and emotional benefits that a regular practice can yield. At the same time, however, I felt clumsy and ungainly at the best of times, much less in the middle of a class of lean and graceful yogis contorting themselves with ease into one pretzel-like pose after another. I wanted to learn yoga without embarrassing myself.

Since beginning my journey into yoga, I have thankfully realized that most practitioners of yoga are not the lithe, flawless ballerinas that I imagined, but instead are everyday people just like me -- lacking balance, perhaps, tight in the hamstrings, or not altogether graceful. Still, stepping into a yoga studio felt terrifying. Beginning a simple practice at home can help those new to yoga build the confidence, flexibility, and strength that will enable them, one day, to take that leap and immerse themselves in the daunting yet joyful experience of a live yoga class if they choose. Learning yoga at home definitely helped me.

But how does one initiate such a process? Thankfully, there are a myriad of useful tools and resources available to both beginner and experienced yoga practitioners alike that will deepen any yoga endeavor. Such resources are particularly suited to establishing a home practice.

On Screen

Visual instruction aides are indispensable to the yoga newbie. Beginners can use these resources to establish proper alignment in basic poses by watching, listening, and then imitating the cues of the DVD-based instructors. It is imperative for beginners to learn to move safely from pose to pose, establishing a healthy foundation for more advanced practice and protecting themselves from injury. There are a number of excellent videos on the market to choose from.

Gaiam sells a number of DVD yoga sequences for every level of practice. Gaiam instructor Suzanne Deason offers a wonderful weight loss yoga series, which I continue to use in my own practice, as well as a sequence entitled Easy Yoga. Patricia Walden's Yoga for Beginners and Flexibility Yoga DVDs are another excellent place to start. Rodney Yee, another renowned Gaiam name, focuses on the core in Abs Yoga for Beginners. Yee's Yoga Burn, another one of my personal favorite routines, is a more advanced workout for those looking to intensify their practice.

Shiva Rea has also created a number of incredible yoga DVDs. I am most impressed by her title Yoga Shakti: The Complete Practice. This DVD boasts the "yoga matrix," which allows viewers to select their own poses and sequence to follow. This is a wonderful option for those who are slightly more advanced and want to begin to remove the training wheels from their practice. Yoga Shakti also includes an array pre-arranged suggested sequences that last anywhere from five to sixty minutes. This DVD is a solid investment for the beginner that will maintain its usefulness even as the individual grows and advances.

Another favorite series from my yoga DVD collection is Yoga Booty Ballet, available from Beachbody. This is a great option for those who want a holistic fitness experience. The original Yoga Booty Ballet collection boasts cardio, sculpting, and abdominal workouts that draw on the schools of ballet and yoga. A training section helps beginning yoga practitioners to establish good alignment and a knowledge of cues for core poses. Teigh and Gillian, the trained dancers and certified yoga instructors who created and star in the program, also offer Yoga Booty Ballet Live!, with more dance-based cardio as well as sculpting, weight lifting, and yoga, filmed in their Los Angeles studio. The Yoga Booty Ballet Master Series provides a deeper yoga experience, with routines specifically geared for the morning or evening, as well as practices that target the abdominals and, as the title cheerfully proclaims, the booty.

This series is not only a wonderful tool for both the beginning yogi as well as someone just starting to increase their fitness and workouts, but is is a much more light-hearted collection of workouts than most exercise and yoga DVDs. Teigh and Gillian are always smiling, and often make campy quips. In addition, they do use more spiritual language than the Gaiam products, using phrases like "embrace your inner Goddess," which I find a little grating. However, I do enjoy the sometimes cheesy fun of these workouts, especially in the Live! series, and find this a refreshing addition to what can often be a too-serious yoga DVD collection.

Ears Only

Audio resources are another wonderful addition to any yoga practitioner's library. Such non-visual practices are an excellent at-home resource for those who possess a solid grasp of major poses and alignment. These practices are wonderful for advanced beginners or other experienced yogis looking to deepen their experiences on the mat. Shiva Rea offers audio-only CD practices, as does Gaiam.

The advent of podcasting technology has seen a boom in audio-only yoga practices on the internet. Web-savvy users can download yoga practice podcasts through iTunes or RSS feeds, or directly from the instructor's website. My favorite podcasters are Elsie Escobar and Hillary Rubin, two certified anusara yoga instructors who make their live classes available for free online. Podcasts provide a wonderful opportunity to experience different forms of yoga, deepen poses, and spice up a lackluster practice. Podcast practices are one of my personal favorite forms of yoga classes, and I download and participate in several every week.

In Print

Books and magazines can be excellent learning tools for the new yoga practitioner. Yoga Journal magazine often features short practices as well as in-depth explorations of single poses. This is an indispensable resource for an individual who wants to improve his or her foundation and alignment in both basic and more advanced poses.

My favorite yoga book is OM Yoga: A Guide for Daily Practice by Cyndi Lee. This spiral bound book provides a practice for every day of the week, complete with stick figure sketches and explanations to aide the beginner in finding safe alignment through the sequences. Each day's practice comes with a two page spread that is a summary of the sequence, making it easy for the reader to follow along. The various practices focus on flexibility, relaxation, strength, balancing, and so forth.

On the Web

The internet boasts a vast catalogue of yoga-related resources for practitioners at all levels. From blogs to community forums to retail sites, the offerings of the World Wide Web support a home-based yoga practice. Yoga Yak, for example, is a wonderful site that provides short video discussions and practices with specific focuses, such as yoga for sadness or for better sleep. In addition, this website has a detailed explanation of the poses their sequences use as well as a guide for developing a home practice.

The World Yoga Practice Month (or WoYoPracMo) website is a community that I enjoy participating in. WoYoPracMo began as a month-long yoga marathon in January 2008 where participants pledged to practice yoga everyday and share about their experiences through the website as well as their individual blogs. Once the event ended the participants wanted to maintain both their improved routines as well as the communal commitment to a shared goal, so the administrators continue to pose new challenges every month. Online communities like this one are wonderful for those who embrace a primarily home-based yoga practice because they enable individuals to connect and communicate with others engaged in the same endeavor, providing opportunities for new relationships and learning. I don't feel that yoga is meant to be practiced in a vacuum, and having a kula, or community, is important even for those who don't attend live classes.

Starting to practice yoga can be a simultaneously thrilling and terrifying experience, especially for those who don't feel comfortable in a live class setting. Thankfully, there are innumerable products available to aide even the greenest yogi develop a solid home practice. Through the discerning use of video, audio, print, and web-based resources, anyone can learn yoga at home.