Today I’m going to talk about a scary topic. It is something that is “hidden in the closet” of every yoga practitioner. Sometimes we are willing to open the closet door and show you what we have and at other times we’d really rather that you not ask. Today we’re going to talk about “the home practice” and specifically my home practice.
September's theme for my advanced studies yoga program was “home practice.” Based on the application to get into the program, I thought that it was assumed that everyone had to have some sort of home practice to be accepted. Yet we still talked about this in September. Last Thursday was our first class of October. Noting this, the teacher asked us, “How’s your home practice?” Silence followed. No response from the students. She continued, “Well, you have one, right? Last month’s focus was home practice, and now you all have one? Oh and by the way, ‘home practice’ is really code for daily home practice.” Hmm, yeah, that sounds like a good idea!
One problem with developing a home yoga practice is figuring out what to do while you’re practicing. What exactly are you practicing when you are doing yoga at home without a teacher calling out directions and adjustments? By what method do teachers string together a set of poses and what if my sequence is incorrect? What if I don't do this pose correctly? Fortunately, sequencing poses has not been a problem for me. I just get stuck with my own questioning about whether I am doing a pose correctly and how much alignment really matters overall.
A second, and larger, problem with developing a home yoga practice is time. Most yoga students claim that they just don’t have enough time to fit in their yoga practice. We go to public classes which take 1-1.5 hours each perhaps once or twice a week. How do we fit in 90 minutes of yoga every day? But is 90 minutes the perfect amount of time? Could we fit in 30 minutes? When should it be? Before bed? When we first wake up? From our teacher’s perspective, she would be happy if the average yoga student consistently practiced for 15-20 minutes everyday. This student would see changes in their body and mind because of their consistent practice. Our teacher then added that since we were advanced studies students that we should be practicing for 60 minutes every day.
I’m still stuck on the problem of when. Sometimes you just have to create time where you don't think you have it.
Monday night I stayed after school to do some needed lesson planning (since I had spent my work time over the weekend on marking period grades). I got the call from Grant at 4:40pm to come pick him up from the bart at 5:07pm to take him home (as planned). He already knew that I intended on taking a yoga class at 5:45pm. (A perk of the advanced studies program is taking some free classes). I had brought my clothes and my mat with me to school, and I had even had a snack right after school so that my stomach would be relatively empty by 5:45, but I wouldn’t be starving before class was done. On my way to get Grant I started to feel tired and started to wonder how much I really wanted to take this class. But how could I pass it up? It was free! I must go! But I didn’t want to wait around for it to start (if Grant were to drop me off on his way home). But I didn’t want to drive home and then hop on my bike to go back to the yoga studio and I didn’t want to walk to class because I didn’t want to walk home by myself in the dark. I could go to a later class! There were two choices, one at 7:30 and one at 7:45. But that’s too late and if I’m feeling tired now, I will certainly be too tired later! But it is a free class! I have to go! Ugh, what am I going to do?
So what do I do when I get flustered over too many choices? I don't make a choice. I just went home.
And at home I decided to do my own free practice for 60 minutes (which turned into 80 by the time I was done) in the comfort of my own bedroom with my own pillows and blankets. Every pose practiced in the order of my choosing. All of my favorites, one after another and even a few poses that I knew I needed to work on. Oh and I even got to do some of that chanting that I talked about in the last post. It was great.
Home practice. Yup, got one.
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