If you’re a Yoga beginner, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by all of the information out there about Yoga. How you begin your practice will ultimately lay the foundation for where you go with your Yoga practice, and what kind of results you get from the time you put into practicing. So here’s a couple of important recommendations specifically for Yoga beginners. First of all, make sure that you learn the right Yoga poses first; certain ones are better for beginners while many others should not be attempted if your new. And secondly, take your time to learn the Yoga poses well. Sloppy poses are where injuries come from, and they will not give you the best benefit both physically and mentally.
Learning a Yoga pose well means understanding and attaining the correct alignment. Most students follow a teacher or picture without any real idea as to what the correct position is. When we don’t know what the proper alignment is, it simply won’t happen because the imbalances in our bodies always pull us out of alignment. That’s really important to understand – just because you are moving your body and doing Yoga poses doesn’t mean you’re doing them right. There are specific alignment points in each Yoga pose and if you don’t know them, your body will not naturally attain them. Unfortunately many Yoga teachers don’t know these alignment points either, they just “flow” through the poses without paying much attention to the form. But fortunately it doesn’t matter if your teacher knows these points or not, because you can learn them on your own and concentrate on them when you practice – in any teacher’s class! Proper alignment will keep you safe, deliver the best results from your efforts, and give you an understanding of what you’re actually supposed to be focusing on.
Making sure you begin by learning the correct poses is also key for Yoga beginners. There are hundreds of Yoga poses, and if you start with the wrong ones you’ll risk injury and neglect to learn from the ground up. The poses you learn first are the ones that provide the best foundation. Advanced Yoga poses are based on the more basic ones. So we start with the basic poses and learn them well, and that gives us the correct foundation for progressing forward safely and effectively.
Beginning Yoga with the right poses and proper alignment will make you feel great and balance your body in the process. The more time you invest in the beginning, the better your future practice will be.