Hello sweet at-home Honeys! I have a teeny feeling that after what might have been an initial enthusiasm for making-the-best-out-of-a-tough-situation and setting up your little at-home yoga studios, you might be feeling a little lull. It’s okay! None of us have ever done this before! We’re learning!
Listen, I have 3–5 “what-the-actual-f*ck” moments myself daily, and I’m learning as I go, too. But I do have an at-home and off-the-mat practice that I started cultivating before this shit started going down and I am more grateful for it now than ever.
I’ve compiled a short list of my best tips, in the hopes that it might spark a renewed sense of (at least luke-warm) enthusiasm.
#1 Keep your expectations LOW (really good slogan for this entire situation, actually)
Stop beating yourself up for not doing a full 60 or 75-minute vinyasa practice with a luxurious 10-minute savasana. Guess what? We’ve got the data and almost no one is watching the full 60 minutes of the classes posted. Did you move your body a little today? HEY THAT’S AWESOME YOU DID IT!
#2 Make it accessible and easy to hop onto your mat (+ try the pomodoro technique!)
We recently discussed in one of our member zoom calls that people’s backs were hurting extra from working in places (kitchen chairs, beds, couches) that they don’t normally work in. I’m in the same boat, and I keep my mat rolled out near by (for me it’s out on my little deck). Everytime I catch a little lull in my mental capacity or my body starts to hurt I just get the hell up and go to my mat. Sometimes it’s just five minutes of movement, sometimes it’s more. If you’re the kind of person who likes something with a little more structure, check out the pomodoro method and break up work with short bursts of movement.
#3 Yoga ≠ the poses
Yes, sometimes yoga makes our bodies stretchier, sometimes it makes them sweatier, skinnier, or stronger. But the real gift of yoga is what it does for our minds, and that you can find without the hour-long power flow (absolutely no shade to an hour-long power flow. Obviously.). A little bit of anything goes a long way. For me, my most consistent yoga practice lately has been 10–20 minutes of meditation every morning before I turn off airplane mode on my phone. My life is a million times better (this is only a slight exaggeration) on the days that I do it and it is noticeably harder on the days that I don’t. Maybe for you it’s 10 minutes of a couple restorative poses before bed (legs-up-the-wall is a great pre-bedtime one) while listening to a little guided nighttime meditation. Maybe today it’s doing the dishes super mindfully. Congrats, you did yoga today.
#4 Practice stopping in the middle of a spiral
Ahhh the spiral. If you weren’t familiar with it before, my guess is you’ve become pretty intimate with it since you got locked in your house and told to stay there indefinitely because no one has a plan for getting you out. The spiral can kick-off with any number of thoughts and does not discriminate. Some fave kickstarters of my brain are: “Have my leggings always felt this tight?” (Leggings are...tight by design.) “Why didn’t I invest in hand-sanitizer before this?/Why didn’t I invest in anything before this?” (Because you didn’t have any money.) “What if by the time this ends my ovaries are gone?” (Not a thing.) Notice the spiral, and then do what we practice on our mats. We’ve been training for this! Stop the spiral with a big breath and some awareness. Put your hand on your heart. Remind your brain that the spiral doesn’t help you control any of it. Guess what???? You just did yoga. That is the practice part. The doing it! The presence. The stopping. The breathing.
#5 Be honest with yourself and those around you about what you need when it comes to your practice
Be honest with your partner about how much you need and appreciate the alone time. Be honest with your boss or your business partners about what you need if it helps get you “on your mat” (talking very broadly here. You don’t need to tell them you plan on lying in “savasana” for an hour). And if any of them (your partner or your boss OR your children) is being mean to you, send me their phone number. I’m not afraid to boss any of them around.
#6 Lastly and most importantly: Be kind and gentle with yourself when you “don’t practice”
This one doesn’t need any explaining. Please do this one. It’s THE one. The most important one.
Finally, I’ll just say, the only way I care that you all to come out of this is alive. Maybe you’ll need some time to build up those chaturanga muscles again when we come back together. Maybe you’ll decide you never liked them in the first place and never want them back and you’ll start practicing like me (i.e. mostly child’s pose, occasionally deigning to rise for a nice low lunge or a half-pidge). Maybe you’re going ham on the chaturangas in isolation and you’re gonna be so jacked we won’t even recognize you when this is all over. But either way, surviving is enough. And if you build any new skills during this time may it be gentleness with yourself and others. Cuz guess what???? That’s yoga, too.