Beginner’s Guide to Starting (and Sticking With) Your Yoga Practice

It's a new year (or month or day) and you’ve written out a list of resolutions, with one being to start a regular yoga practice.

You sign up for classes at your local studio, or find an online teacher that you like. You start strong, and feel proud of yourself each time you make it to class. This may continue for several weeks, maybe even a month or two. But eventually other things get in the way.

You start skipping that Friday evening class to get drinks with co-workers instead. Saturday morning rolls around and you’d rather sleep in than get on the mat. One day you realize that your goal of starting and sticking to your yoga practice has become a thing of the past. What went wrong?

We’ve all experienced some version of this scenario, myself included. While there’s no tried and true solution that will always work for everyone, here are some important lessons I’ve learned over the years about how to maintain a regular yoga practice.

Yoga Must be an Enjoyable Activity

It seems like a no-brainer, but yoga practice must be an enjoyable activity. This helps ensure that we’ll want to keep doing it regularly. Sure, there may be moments of challenge or discomfort, but overall the entire experience has to be something you like doing. Otherwise why do it?

Many people think that yoga is just about contorting the body into a specific shape. In reality, yoga has just as much to do with the brain as it does the body.

If we’re struggling in a class and feeling stressed out or judgmental of ourselves for not being able to “do it well enough” we’re entirely missing the point, and probably not having much fun.

So, how do we make yoga more enjoyable? It starts with finding the right style of yoga to match our needs. Some people might like a more vigorous, fitness centered class, while others are drawn to slower, more floor-based poses.

Try out a few different classes and see which style feels best. This is the one that will keep you coming back because it feels good to your body and brain.

Yoga is a Daily Hygiene Practice

In Kaiut Yoga we often talk about how yoga becomes a daily hygiene practice, like brushing your teeth. Over time it becomes something that you do every day, not because you should, but because you want to.

When yoga becomes part of your daily routine there’s no “should” at play. We don’t feel obligated to practice, we practice because it’s what our brain and body needs and wants.

With daily practice comes the realization that we feel better. There’s less chronic pain and our mind is more clear. We have more mobility, and our ability to remain calm in stressful situations improves. These are the real benefits of a daily yoga practice.

Sometimes people ask me- How can I make yoga a daily priority? I simply don’t have the time to do an hour of practice every day. That’s not a problem! A daily practice doesn’t always have to be an hour. You can put your legs up the wall for ten minutes, sit in Virasana or do a couple Sukhasanas.

This is enough to signal to our brains that it’s time to slow down and tune in to those areas of the body that need our attention. Over time, as you feel the positive benefits in your body and nervous system, you’ll find that your practice time naturally increases.

When it comes to beginning and sticking with a regular yoga practice, enjoyability and consistency are key. Starting small helps our bodies and brains understand and integrate the benefits of the practice, and over time we will see that we want to practice more often, not because we should, but because it feels good.