To begin with, spend a moment thinking about why you want to practice yoga. Is it to loose weight? Then you’ll want to practice a more active form of yoga that gets your heart a-pumpin. Practicing to fend off stress and fatigue? Then take up a gentler, slower flow. Want to learn more about the subtle and energetic body, and meditate? Kundalini or Tantra’s for you. Once you assess your goals, do some research, either online or at a bookstore, and read up about all the different styles of yoga.

After finding a few yoga styles that sounds like a good match for you, I’d recommend scoping out the local scene in your neighborhood, and seeing if you can find some basic classes to begin taking. You can also look online (such as under our “postures” section), or buy instructional books or DVDs to get started, but yoga has always been a transmission of teachings, passed down from teacher to student, and it can really help to find a good teacher to at least give you some initial guidance. Plus, there are so many teachers and forms of yoga out there, that if you don’t like one, you still have many other options! Hatha yoga is the most common form of yoga, but there are several schools of Hatha yoga to choose from.

Happy exploring!

Hi there,

Love your site and love the fact that I can practice the postures at home! I’m fairly new to yoga and have also recently started meditating. It’s amazing how much better and at peace I feel in the short time that I’ve been practicing. Do you think you could add some guided meditations to your site?

Namaste

Dionne

Hello Dionne,

Thanks for writing in! I can definitely make some meditation podcasts and put them up here. In the meantime, I’d like to share with you a wonderful resource for guided meditations, that I use frequently: Dharma Seed. Click on “talks,” and you should find many talks, made available for free, from some of the best meditations teachers in the country. Hope you find this useful!

Love, Sarah

I would like to start doing some yoga, I am a very beginner and want to do something that will stretch my body and make me more flexible. What do you recommend? Erin

Hi Erin! Welc-OM (bad joke, I know) to the world of yoga!

I’d suggest starting out by dedicated about ten minutes a day to learning some very basic sequences. The first thing I can recommend is for you to learn the sun breath, practicing this gentle hamstring and backbody opener for a few days. The sun breath may appear simple, but each pose can be taken on its own right and fine-tuned; try to be very mindful of your entire body’s placement when practicing. Once you feel comfortable with this, you can begin to add other poses onto it. Check out our “postures” section for ideas. After you have gained some familiarity with different poses, I’d also suggest this video I made for newcomers to yoga; this will give you a feel of what it is like to “flow” between the postures.

If you’re enjoying yourself, you might then want to begin to take a few classes or study with a teacher, who can help you continue to build up your practice.

Have fun!

I’m running a Yoga club for the kids I work with at the youth center and I was wondering if you had any suggestions on how to get them to focus on breathing. I’ve heard of yoga games you can play with them and story lines, but it just seems that they don’t focus on their breathing at all which is a big part of the yoga lifestyle.

Thanks, Casey

Ah, I love this question! And I love that you are running a yoga club for kids, that sounds like so much fun, and so needed… And yes, you’re absolutely right that breathwork  (pranayama) is central to a yoga practice. Let’s pause here for a moment for those readers new to yoga, and take a look at what pranayama is …

Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, written in about 200 BCE in India, is the primary text on yoga. In it, Patanjali outlines an eight-limbed path for how yogis should live; these eight steps form the framework for a yoga practice, and are still followed today. “Asanas,” or physical body postures, is the third step on this path; “pranayama,” or breathing exercises, is the forth step. In adult yoga classes, we practice both physical postures and breathing exercises, such as ujai or nadi shodhana.

However, from my experiences of teaching yoga to kids, I have come to believe that teaching kids’ pranayama is less important than first getting them interested in the physical aspects of yoga. As put forth in the Yoga Sutras, practicing pranayama requires a higher degree of sophistication than it takes to practice the physical postures. And this is okay – there are many benefits to just practicing the asanas, and later introducing kids, once ready, to breathwork. I believe the physical asanas alone can give kids an outlet for energy expenditure and the imagination, as well as teach kids how to be still and quiet within themselves.

In order to get children interested in yoga, we have to “speak their language,” and first make yoga playful and fun, otherwise they will resist the practice altogether. Playing games is a great place to start. After showing the kids maybe 10-12 basic yoga poses, you might:

• Play musical mats: Ask the kids to stand in a circle around the yoga mats. Make sure there is one less mat than kid. Then call out one of the animals, and have the kids run to the mats to perform this pose – the kid without a mat gets to call out the next animal! Continue as you would with musical chairs.
• Tell animal stories: With the kids, make up a story linking the animal poses together, adding in your own made-up movements between the poses.
• Play a mirroring game: Ask the kids to find a partner. Each person gets to take turns creating and leading a yoga sequence, while the other mirrors them. Encourage them to really get into character, meowing in cat pose, roaring in lion pose, etc. After each kid mirrors the other, ask one person to again create a sequence while the other now does the opposite. For example, if the leader is standing in mountain pose, the follower will sit down.

The yoga games you can play are endless, there is no limit to how creative you can get here!

After generating an interest in yoga poses, you could then introduce awareness of the breath in the same gentle, playful manner. Because pranayama is hard even for adults to master, I have found that I have more success when I teach kids a simplified version of breathing exercises, and welcome visualization and imagination into their breathing practice – No need for the kids to sit in full lotus and meditate for two hours, make it fun! Again, from my experiences, kids LOVE this stuff. Here are some breath awareness games you might try:

• Breath journey: Ask the kids to lie down on their backs with their eyes closed, as in savasana, then tell them they are going to go on a journey. Ask them to imagine a cloned self, then have them shrink this cloned self down to the size of an ant. This tiny self travels on the breath! Ask them to imagine that their breath is their favorite color, e.g., maybe their breath looks like a purple ribbon. This tiny self climbs on top of their breath, buckles up, and then enters their body. Get specific here – where are they now? The throat, chest, stomach? What are they seeing? Can they slow down their breath so their tiny self can get a better view of their insides? When they exhale, their tiny self jumps off one breath and onto the next. Continue like this, improvising as you go.
• Bathing the body in breath: Again, ask the kids to lie in savasana. Tell them to imagine that their next breath in is going all the way down to their toes, washing out and cleaning their insides as it travels downwards. Exhaling, the breath passes through their legs, stomach, chest, and out their nose, expelling any mean or sad thoughts or feelings it found. Send the next inhalation all the way down to their knees, then to their hips, etc. Continue like this, bringing their awareness to each and every body part, “cleaning” it as it travels around in the body.
• Exploring all the ways we breath: For more active breathwork, have the kids sit cross-legged in a circle. Tell them that they are explorers of the breath, and that we want to find as many types of breaths as possible. First, have them breathe with their mouths wide open; you might ask them to imagine that they are fogging up a window on a cold snowy day. Ask questions – was the breath hot or cold? Dry or damp? Where did they feel it in their body? Then have them pretend that they are blowing out birthday candles, with their lips pursed. What was this breath like? Have them hold their hand about a foot away from their mouth. Which breath can they feel on their hand? Then ask them to seal their mouth and breath through their nose. Continue like this, asking questions about each breath as you go.

For more breath games, you might also check out books on teaching yoga to kids, available on Amazon. Hope these help you out!

You know your body, and the teacher doesn’t. Listen to the teacher, but ultimately do as you need to.

Yoga teaches us to listen to and learn from our body; to push when we need pushing, and to stop when we need to stop. Instead of focusing on the final pose, find what feels good and comfortable for you – and then stop and ENJOY it!

Hi Sarah!

I have really tight hamstrings and shoulders.  What are some good ways to loosen them up?

Thanks,
Jill

Hi Jill, and thanks for writing! These are probably the two most common areas for body tightness, so hopefully this question will be useful to many people …

First, let’s take a look at the hamstrings. The hamstrings are actually three muscles and their associated tendons that originate at your buttocks and run down the back of your leg to knee. When walking and engaging in other day-to-day activities, we naturally contract and release (thereby stretching) certain leg muscles, such as the calf, but generally don’t really stretch out the hamstrings much unless you work in a profession that involves a lot of bending over and lifting things.

There are TONS and tons of beginner yoga poses that stretch out of the hamstrings; downward dog, standing forward folds, and lungs are all great examples. My absolute favorite, though, and the one I’d to recommend to you today is:

Supta Padangusthasana ! (Otherwise known as, “reclined leg stretch.”)

I adore this hamstring stretch because it is accessible to all levels, and hey – who doesn’t love to work out while lying on their back?? Do this every evening, three minutes on each side, and I guarantee that after four to six weeks, you’ll begin to inch your knee closer and closer to you nose as your hamstrings loosen up …

Now for the shoulder issue. There are several muscle groups operating here, but when you say that you have tight shoulders, I think you mean that you don’t have a great degree of retraction … As in, if you were to stand in mountain pose, bring your arms up to cactus, and then extend them back in space, you would not be able to move your arms back too far. This is very common, especially for people who work desk jobs, because so much time is spent rounding the thoracic spinal curve.

There are also numerous beginner yoga home remedies for this tightness; clasping your hands behind your back when in a standing forward fold can work wonders, as can simply taking a strap (or, if you don’t have one, a rolled up t-shirt) in both hands, extending your arms out away from your body, sliding your hand apart so that they are slightly wider than shoulder width, and then raising the strap over your head and lower it down behind you. This feels woooonderful after a long week.

However, my favorite shoulder-opener involves the wall, and (I think?) is simply called “shoulder stretch at wall.” Come to a wall and stand so that you are perpendicular to the wall; or so that only one shoulder is facing the wall. Extend the arm that is closest to the wall out behind you, and gently stretch your shoulder back. Hold here for at least one minute, and then repeat on the other side.

Good luck!

Love, Sarah

What should I do if I get a head rush in yoga class?

Nancy

Ah, the faint feeling, the blackened vision, the dizzyness – As someone with the blood pressure of a five-year-old, I am very familiar with this issue…

It’s not abnormal to experience a head rush, or what doctors fancily call “orthostatic hypertension” after sitting or lying down for an longer period of time, because the blood flow in the body has suddenly changed. What to do depends on what pose you’re coming out of, but the three basic rules of thumb are as follows:

1. If coming from a seated or lying down position to standing, come up veeery slowly, to give your heart a chance to pump blood back up to the brain. For example, if coming up from a standing forward fold, instead of reaching your arms out, around, and up to mountain pose, put your hands on your hips and then come only halfway up, to a flat back pose. Pause here, let the blood flow re-calibrate. Then come up to stand.

2. If the above doesn’t work, sit down and wait until you feel stable enough to resume.

3. Once the head rush has passed, drink water! Head rushes are often the result of dehydration.

This should help! Remember, it’s normal to experience these from time to time, especially if you have a low heart rate or blood pressur,e but if you experience head rushes frequently, you may want to consult your physician.

Hi Sarah,

Love the site and finding all the information on here very helpful! Being new to yoga, I’m finding it to be much more enjoyable then some of the exercise programs I’ve tried in the past and given up on. My question concerns yoga and weight loss: Do you find that regular practising of yoga leads to weight loss or are there specific routines which would help me to reach my weight loss goals.

Thanks much!

Sally

Thanks for reaching out, Sally! That’s a great question. The short answer is, yes, as long as your practice the asanas (postures), yoga, like any other movement-based activity, will help you loose weight. Yoga is both an aerobic (with oxygen) and anaerobic (without oxygen – meaning that your body’s need for oxygen exceeds it’s supply, so your body uses energy sources stored in your muscles) exercise, depending on the type of yoga practiced. The more gentle the yoga, the less calories will be burned and weight lost. Examples of less-strenuous yoga forms include Hatha, Yin, and Restorative. However, if you practice a more aggressive form of yoga, you may see physical results faster. For example, you might try Ashtanga (often called “Power Yoga” – the name alone should clue you in as to what to expect!), Bikram (“hot” yoga) or Vinyasa (a fast-paced type of yoga with lots of variety). Take a look around at local yoga studios for these types of yoga, or ask the studios about their most physically-demanding classes.

Let me know if I can assist you with anything else! Good luck!