10 Tips to Begin Your Yoga Practice. Weight-Losers and Tree Huggers Welcome!

Before landing my country’s “top job”, I taught yoga for quite a few years.  The expectations of first-time students coming to a yoga class were as varied as they were. Weight-Loss and New-Year-Resolution folks. The Show-offs and the Born-Again-New-Ager-Tree-Change crowd. To sum-up: as they say in that other country that is so brilliant as to invent such an expression, it was a whatever tickles your fancy kind of scene.

They all got to yoga, and yoga would work its magic no matter what – and that’s all that mattered.  It was my hope, and an aspiration when I taught, that my student’s initial expectations would be scuppered by their deepening experience of yoga.

Set to start a yoga practice? If you are new to yoga and have an empty cup, or you may have a peculiar view of the practice because you live in Northern California between a Bikram yoga hot room and a Love-Thy-Yoni women-only yoga retreat, the following tips may help you cross the doormat into your new or renewed yoga practice in fine mental form:

1. A sense of humour goes a looong way. You will fall over and probably not be able to touch your knees – and that’s just trying to get out of your car.
2. What your body can do is not a measure of how well you understand the yoga teaching.  It’s an opportunity to be grateful with what you have – and enjoy it!
3. Those long hippie hugs at the beginning and end of class are just there to make you smile and learn not to judge.  There is always one who will want to blend auras and connect with your heart chakra.  I spent years trying to run.  But it’s futile.  Love them: they are people too!
4. Your breathing will sound like Darth Vadar.  I mention him because I heard that he made a name for himself.  He was actually a yoga teacher from our country, but decided to use his moola banda to cultivate the dark force.  We sent him to Planet Endor, as we do not tolerate the dark use of yogic energy in our peaceful nation.  You know, I sometimes find myself wondering what ever happened to him.  But I digress.
5. Trust in yoga.  On the surface it looks like a bunch of moves.  But they are simply doorways that open to profound multi-dimensional experiences.  Really.
6. Have no goals. See where your practice will take you.  You can’t know a gift that you don’t understand, so sit back and enjoy the ride.
7. Be a student in life and don’t assume that you know anything.  When a student progresses in their understanding of yoga, they tend to realise how much they don’t know, which leaves them feeling that they know less than when they began.  Confused?  Just wait until you know that you don’t know anything!  Those long stares and unblinking eyes of some yoga students may be a product of this.
8. Be patient.  Time is a good teacher, though it mocks most students. 
9. Don’t plan on being good at yoga today or next week.  Yoga can be your teacher for life.  It’s subtle and profound.  Dare to be in the moment and learn from each breath and asana (posture).  The same posture will teach something new if you inquire with openness, instead of thinking about the next “more interesting” move.
10. Yoga is not for everybody.  Is there another discipline you prefer, that leaves you feeling peaceful inside and strong yet supple on the outside?

    

 It sounds easy doesn’t it?!  Well, it’s a game plan:  Be patient, don’t judge, be grateful yada yada yada.  Now you have to find a good teacher - which is another issue altogether. Gosh...where have I placed those notes again, with the 10 tips on how to find a good yoga instructor?