Category: Yoga Teacher

Cultivating a Home Practice in 4 Easy Steps

 

Say the word “yoga” in conversation, and you tend to evoke imagery of lycra-clad (or barely-clad) stretch-fanatics, moving and flowing in a spacious, airy studio that smells distinctly of essential oils. The yoga industry caters to an ever-growing crowd of over 37 million North Americans, many of whom were introduced to yoga in a studio setting, or via group classes at a local fitness facility. Enrolling in group classes at a studio, gym, or communal facility is an amazing way to not only further delve into your practice, but also to integrate yourself within a pocket of your local community. Layer in the guidance and knowledge of an educated teacher, and an element of surprise and personal non-attachment when it comes to creating the sequence to guide classes, and you’ve got an ideal environment to grow your yoga practice. Eventually, however, you may find yourself noticing that some days, your body is calling out for something different than the sequence is built upon. And some days, the idea of being alone with your mat instead of surrounded by others, will resonate with you. As these “some days” meld into “many days,” you may find yourself contemplating alternatives to the seemingly traditional studio practice setting and begin your own home practice.

So…where to next?

Cassandra Cooper Home Practice

Getting back to yogic roots

Although we frequently associate yoga with group practice, look back on traditional texts (e.g. Hatha Pradipika, Chapter 1, Verse 12) and you will discover that Hatha yoga (the most commonly-practiced form of yoga in North America, which encompasses a variety of asana-based practice types) was originally meant to be practiced in solitude:

“The hatha yogi should live alone in a hermitage and practise in a place the length of a boy (one and a half metres), where there is no hazard from rocks, fire, or water, and which is in a well-administered and virtuous kingdom (nation or town) where good alms can be easily attained.”

Now, let’s bear in mind the fact that this text came to fruition during a time when a yogi’s life was divided into four stages, or ashrama, three of which were characterized by significant lack of social interaction and solitude.

As we’ve evolved, so has the setting and style of our personal practice. I’m not one to endorse only practicing in a confined space on a mud-ground with no views of the outside world (but hey, if that’s your jam, go for it!) Approach the development of your personal practice with yogic principle; slowly, mindfully, and with an intention to be open as you adapt and grow.

 

1. Create a space

I used to be one of the classic eye-rolling non-believers when it came to understanding the importance of setting intentions and allowing time to create an energetic space in which to conduct your practice. New-agey? Perhaps. Valid? For me, definitely. For you, maybe not, but before you quickly skip to the more concrete and tangible instructions below, give this a shot.

Establish a spot to practice that doesn’t stress you out. We tend to associate physical locations with memories or habits of repeated actions, so try and find a space that speaks to you in a soothing, calm voice as opposed to one that screeches in high-pitch. Add in what you need to make yourself feel at ease; essential oils, incense, props, music. Make this space your own, customize it for what you need in that moment to help cultivate sukham and feel at ease.

 

2. Build a foundation

Taking ownership over your practice is an empowering but also overwhelming step in the always-continuous yogic journey. Keep the steps manageable by developing a framework upon which you add, subtract, and modify as you become more comfortable guiding your home practice.

  • Start with a short meditation, five minutes is plenty to start. Scan your physical body, notice what feelings come up, and take time to establish the link between your moving parts and your moving mind.
  • Move on to breath work (pranayama). In a traditional yoga practice, pranayama is its own dedicated practice, and can take upwards of 30 minutes. Bear in mind that breath work is difficult, and if done incorrectly or without awareness can cause harm to your body. For that reason, start by simply working to lengthen your inhales and exhales, focusing on breathing into specific parts of your body where you’d like to create a sense of softness or spaciousness. As you become increasingly comfortable with breath work, begin to research and incorporate different techniques. My suggestion is to journal afterwards, and identify which techniques resonate with you, and the mental and physical responses that are generated as a result.
  • Work on joint mobility next. Bring some movement into the main joints (neck/shoulders, wrists, elbows, hips, knees, ankles), and spend extra time exploring areas that feel as though they need more acute attention at that point in time. Experiment with new ranges of motion, load bearing and non-load bearing exercises, and gradually incorporate greater complexity into your joint warm-ups.
  • Build heat. Begin to incorporate more activity and movement into your practice. Traditional yoga methodology will tell you to launch into sun salutations, vinyasas, etc. These are great options, but they’re not the only ones. Long holds in strength-building postures such as Ashta Chandrasana (high crescent lunge), or dynamic squats can build heat equally as effectively as faster-paced flows. Experiment and ensure that you balance right to left side with respect to sequencing and breath hold times.
  • Challenge balance. After cultivating strength and heat, work on understanding the balance between the physical stability and your inner balance. Base your foundation in simplicity, and eventually move towards more complex, balance-oriented asanas or movement patters.
  • Cool down. This portion of your self-practice can mean so many different things, depending primarily on the selected theme of focus the active portion of your practice. Try to counterbalance whichever parts of your body were recruited, and give them an opportunity to soak in breath and a bit of extra length and space. Use the cool down as an opportunity to begin reconnecting with how you’re feeling, what’s changed, what hasn’t, and any thoughts that arose during the process.
  • Choose a closing shape for your practice. Seated, side-lying, prone, or in good old fashioned savasana. Before you come into whatever final shape you choose, take a few moments to ask your body what it wants. This is an opportunity to open a dialogue and further distance yourself from taking the general “autopilot” option.

 

3. State your focus

I’m a big proponent of focusing your practice around a theme, as was alluded to in the second section here. Working with an anatomical, spiritual, seasonal, or energetic point of focus on which to build and structure your practice brings an element of cohesiveness onto your mat, and provides you with an opportunity to better understand how your self-practice is an opportunity for holistic connection.

Allow your focus to fluctuate with your mood, your situation, and anything else that you feel makes sense for you in that time frame. Journaling and documenting your sequence is a very cool way to look back on how your practice evolves, and remind yourself of aspects that worked well, and also those things you tried that might not have had the intended effect.

 

4. Leave a little wiggle room

As your self-practice evolves, you may find yourself working towards apex asanas, and more complex

movements. There may come a period of time when you start to set a more rigid routine and structure around your self-practice; this is not necessarily a detracting factor, stability to ensure growth can be extremely beneficial. That being said, always come back to your initial intention for nurturing a self-practice (hint: the word SELF). Always allow your practice to be what you need in that moment, try to let go of expectations and preconceived notions around what your sequence needs to look like, and what poses or movements you need to focus in on. Some days, your self-practice sequence is going to be a 45 minute savasana or body scan. And that’s okay. Allow yourself to accept that elusive quality, and use it as an opportunity to develop a better relationship with yourself. Enjoy the journey that this practice let’s you embark upon, and try to see even the most frustrating of obstacles as chances to seek new routes of ascension along the path.

 

Cassandra Cooper

Cassandra Cooper

Growing up with a background in competitive figure skating, Cass’ journey with yoga began at a young age. What started as a way of maintaining flexibility and mobility has since shifted to focus on building strength, by combining elements of functional movement into her practice and sequencing, helping to explore the different ways in which each individual’s body moves and changes shape. Since completing Octopus Garden’s 200 hour teacher training, and Rishikesh Yog Peeth’s 300 hour advanced teacher training program, Cass has pursued Barre and Pilates certifications through Stott Pilates, along with Essentrics movement training. The most important thing she’s discovered along the way is that you’re always a student – be curious, always question, carefully analyze, and continuously seek new avenues towards unexpected answers. ‘Yoga is the journey from cosmetic to cosmic beauty.’

Right on Cue: A Guide for Yogis

Bring back curiosity and mindfulness into your practice, leading a class is more than just being right on cue. 

As intelligent, evolved beings we often find it challenging to take directions from others. Think back to the childhood curiosity that frequently found you pushing beyond the neatly laid out boundaries set out for you by parents and elders, questioning everything. If you spend long periods of time with young children in your day-to-day, you’re probably quite used to hearing the word “why?” endlessly repeated in response to basically any statement.

At some point in our lives, generally around the same time we found ourselves confined to a chair and desk for six hours a day, we started to lose that incessant desire to question; to explore beyond the surface of directions sent our way by others. We started to find it much easier to take directions without asking, and go through the motions on an autopilot of sorts.

In our modern yoga and movement practice, this lack of childlike curiosity and autonomy over our physical, mental, and emotional responses to our practice has become a (not-so) silent epidemic.

Right on Cue

Drastic words? Perhaps, but I fully believe that the consequences hold some pretty serious implications and impact. Let me back track by saying that I do not think this falls entirely on yoga practitioners unwilling to ownership of their practice, but also on the part of teachers who continue to repeat generalized cues without much conviction or thought put into how they translate into the bodies of practitioners in the room at that moment in time. And it’s this continuous stream of bland, non-personal cues for both the physical and subtle body that lead to practitioners tuning out, running on autopilot, and failing to connect on a profound level with what’s happening through their practice. As a growing community that has embraced the concept and practice of yoga, it’s time to tune back in to both our teaching and practice, and bring back that act of self-aware questioning.

 

Yoga Teachers

Let’s start by breaking down the difference between teaching and instructing, because they’re two very separate vocations. To instruct is to go through the motions, repeating words and phrases that are far too often not truly our own. An instructor leads with few modifications, and provides cues that do not allow much, if any, wiggle room, without questioning why he or she is asking practitioners to progress through a sequence of movements. A teacher, however, dedicates him or herself to moving outside his or her own definition of the practice in order to better serve the practitioners in the room, at any given time. A true teacher never defines him or herself as such (re: Yeah, actually I’m a yoga teacher. It’s pretty great!), but rather as a vehicle for learning.

The best teachers always question “why,” guide with purpose, and are always students themselves.

So “teachers,” let’s make waves and make changes. Instead of providing alignment cues in a tone that suggests everyone must follow suit, it’s important to provide practitioners with the space to experiment. Encourage everyone to feel out how their body responds to certain movements, to breath pattern, and even to different verbalizations and visual representations of instructions. Heel to heel vs. heel to arch vs. square your hips vs. toes at a 45 degree angle – there is no one or even two or three “right ways” for asana to make its appearance across a vast spectrum of different physical bodies. Let each practitioner determine what works and what doesn’t, and start to find your own voice in how you choose to verbalize your points of guidance.

Right on Cue

The best piece of advice I have been given was by a friend during our 300 hour training in Rishikesh. She observed me teaching our final “practicum” class, and when I looked to her for feedback, she told me that the best parts of my class were when I was being my authentic self. She suggested to me that I forget about turning to those overused, tired cues that we hear teachers repeating with a tireless lack of conviction. Be a little awkward, try to crack a joke or two, if that’s how you best connect and communicate with others. Even those practitioners that are new to your classes and teaching style will better connect with a teacher who carries with him or herself a sense of credibility and confidence, and doesn’t force a falsified presence. Finding your voice, as non-traditional as it may be, is so key to feeling fully comfortable as you strive to enable others to feel comfortable and find themselves through their practice.

 

Yoga Practitioners

Continue to ask “why.” This doesn’t mean that every single cue provided to you by an instructor or teacher needs to be followed up with that verbalization, but question the purpose behind the pose, behind the movement, and behind the cue. Leverage this to build a sense of awareness within your own physical and subtle body – identify how your reactions and responses change each day, and start to foster a deeper level of self-awareness. It’s incredible easy to move through asanas and through your typical flow without fully absorbing each subcomponent within your own being. Avoid the autopilot trap, bring a sense of awareness into your practice, and let that attunement permeate throughout other aspects of your life.

In its most raw form, pre-Instagram yoga challenges, before “Hot Power Flow” classes and “Yoga Bootcamp” classes were ever a thing, yoga symbolized union. It is the understanding that we are all one and the same. Yoga embodies the fact that nothing separates each one of us here; we do not coexist, we only exist as one collective. So let’s take steps towards breaking down the dogmatic teacher-student barriers that have come to be, and provide practitioners with the ownership to shape their respective practices, both on and off the mat.

 

Cassandra Cooper

Cassandra Cooper

Growing up with a background in competitive figure skating, Cass’ journey with yoga began at a young age. What started as a way of maintaining flexibility and mobility has since shifted to focus on building strength, by combining elements of functional movement into her practice and sequencing, helping to explore the different ways in which each individual’s body moves and changes shape. Since completing Octopus Garden’s 200 hour teacher training, and Rishikesh Yog Peeth’s 300 hour advanced teacher training program, Cass has pursued Barre and Pilates certifications through Stott Pilates, along with Essentrics movement training. The most important thing she’s discovered along the way is that you’re always a student – be curious, always question, carefully analyze, and continuously seek new avenues towards unexpected answers. ‘Yoga is the journey from cosmetic to cosmic beauty.’