December 6, 2014

4 Ways to Deepen Your Yoga Practice.

0 Boost Score Mo Minahan (1,510,185)

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Yoga Teacher Training is often described as an opportunity to learn to teach yoga or to deepen your practice.

While they can be unique and wonderful experiences, many of us don’t have an extra couple thousand dollars to spend on deepening our yoga practice. After attending an amazing yoga teacher training a couple of years ago I’ve realized that only we can deepen our practice of yoga.

The deepening, sifting, observing, and growing happens subtly, over time, and often through our own home practice.

These four practices are ones I routinely return to when I feel the need to dive deeper, long to feel connected or want to jumpstart my heart and soul.

Skip the Music

Music is a powerful addition to yoga, but so is subtracting it. When I practice without music I have to hear my bones creak and crack. I have to hear my breath start out uneven and slowly deepen, slowly lengthen. I have to hear both the silence and the noise that I often try to escape. In short, I have to practice alongside myself as the yogi I am and not the yogi I hope to emerge as after my practice.

Practicing without music gives my heart the space to speak up, and when my heart speaks I want to be able to hear it loud and clear.

Try: Noticing the natural noises in your surroundings. The birds, the traffic, the fan, the dishwasher, the silence between your inhale/exhale, and eventually the beating of your own heart. Follow those sounds into the present moment. Linger here, you the teacher, you the student.

Slow it Down

Slowing down our yoga practice means allowing the poses to work on us instead of us working so much on the poses. A more deliberate, slow practice lets us find and focus on gems that are easy to miss when we move quickly. Our breath gets to become our endoscope, exploring our insides for tightness, patterns of holding, and muscles locked in fear and habit.

Try: Holding each pose for at least a minute and pay close attention that each movement corresponds with a complete inhale and exhale. Instead of letting your exhale taper off at the end focus on keeping it strong and steady the entire time. Notice when and how your internal dialogue kicks in. Allow what already is to rise to the surface.

Practice When You Don’t Feel Like It

Reasons I often hear (and use myself) for skipping yoga, especially a home practice, is I’m tired, I’m too busy, or I don’t feel like it today. Ironically, these are the most fertile times for us to practice. These are the times we can observe our internal dialogue as we practice and start doing the deeper work of yoga; that being unifying our mind and body and stepping into a more honest relationship with our true self.

If time is the problem, commit to a ten minute practice once a day. A consistent practice doesn’t have to be a long one. The consistency is the important thing.

Try: Starting with an exhale instead of an inhale. Empty yourself out completely. Now there is space to begin. Instead of “adding” breath and movement, try observing the layers of stress evaporate until all that’s left is breath and movement. Stay focused on linking your breath with your movement instead of trying to get through a certain routine or number of poses.

Explore Mantra

Some of the most revealing insights I’ve experienced in yoga have come through mantra. There are a multitude of mantras to choose from, but let’s focus on the most common one we hear in yoga, om.

Om or aum is a sanskrit syllable also called pranava or “deep sound.”

The three letters correspond to three states of being. The A being the waking state, the U being a dream state, and the M being a state of deep sleep. The ensuing silence is referred to as a fourth state, Turiya, or consciousness itself.

Try: Beginning and ending your practice with an aum. Notice how each feels different. Observe how the sound physically emerges from you, with the A beginning at the back of your throat, the U rising to the roof of your mouth, and the M holding steady with the lips closed.

Deepening our yoga practice doesn’t always mean mastering a harder pose, taking a teacher training, or practicing more. Often it just means opening the door to your heart and courageously choosing to enter with awareness, commitment, and compassion.