Home practice

Nona of Everyday Yogini recently posted about her experiences in starting and keeping up a home practice. I decided that was a good topic to start off my own yoga blog.

I'd kept an intermittent home practice for several years now, but found it difficult to keep it going through busy times or after a break such as an illness. A year ago I made a commitment to practice more consistently. To help me track my progress, I began keeping a log of my practice. Over the past year my home practice has become part of my life, and I've been able to practice an average of 4-6 days a week.

My primary reasons for keeping a home practice are practical: time and money, especially time. Three years ago I moved to an old country farmhouse about 30 miles outside the city where I work. Depending on normal traffic levels, my commute to work--or anything else--in the city takes between 35 and 50 minutes. I honestly hate the thought of adding the extra driving it would take to go to a yoga studio, or (worse yet) waiting around in town after work for an evening class. (Though I have continued to attend a meditation class after work once a week, which I love.) Also, when I started my home practice a year ago I was very low on money, and trying to save for a new car. I couldn't really justify the cost of a class at the time, though I'm in better shape financially now.

Another reason I had for focusing on a home practice instead of classes was that I was coming back from an injury to my shoulder and had to be very slow and careful with myself. There was no way I could do chaturangas like I used to do in class. I know now, though I wasn't aware of it at the time, that I was experiencing the beginnings of osteoarthritis. This past year I have come to terms with having arthritis, and have slowly learned how to manage my symptoms with exercise, diet, and supplements. Easing myself into a yoga practice, starting back at a beginner level, slowly building my strength, and backing off when I needed to has been a large part of learning to live with arthritis. Had I tried to follow along with a class I'm certain I would have injured myself, or at the very least become frustrated that I couldn't keep up with my fellow students.

Practicing at home, I have been much more able to listen to my body and go at my own pace. I have mostly practiced along with DVD's, switching them up to add variety to the practice. NetFlix has been a wonderful aid in helping me audition different videos and find what I like best.

Now that I've been practicing for a year, I know enough to be more self-directed in my practice. Listening to what my body's needs are, I find I can focus on those areas that want the exercise, and modify or eliminate those poses that would stress whatever part of my body is having trouble at the time. I'm finding that sometimes I forgo the DVDs altogether, and simply focus on the poses that I feel drawn to at that time.

One of my new year's resolutions this year is to aim for increasing my practice to an average of 6-7 days a week. (The other resolution is to start keeping this blog.) I would like at some point to start taking weekly classes again, but I definitely won't be giving up my home practice.