I started practicing yoga at home a few years ago due to the utility. 

Sure, I liked the community, teacher attention and built-in motivation of going out to a studio for class, but I was finding that I wasn’t able to attend as often as I wanted to. Schedule, cost and travel logistics often prevented me from practicing in a group setting, and I was itching to have more of it in my life. 

It took some getting used to doing it at home. It took a while to find online resources that I liked and were helpful. It took ages for me to wrangle my motivation to get actually get off the couch and do the damn thing. But eventually, I got to the point where I found myself doing it everyday without hesitation. I saw myself making physical gains I had never experienced going to a studio, and I watched my confidence build knowing that I created a positive routine that no one was helping me to foster but me. 

The question of how to do yoga at home is a big one. Without other people modeling it, we need to forge the path on our own. As someone who has been practicing yoga at home exclusively for the past four years, I’ve picked up some tips and tricks along the way that I’m happy to share with you as you embark on your own journey. 

I hope that you figure out how to have a consistent home yoga practice, and I hope that it does for you what it’s done for me: Making you a better mover, more confident and more in love with your home environment. Let’s get into some of the factors that will help you develop your own enriching home yoga practice.

Motivation

Getting motivated was one of the bigger hurdles in my quest to practice yoga at home. I often found myself making excuses and finding other things to do--things I had more association with, like watching TV or taking a shower or doing the laundry. It was difficult to carve out the time to roll out my mat without actually leaving the house. 

Here are a few things that helped me tremendously with finding the motivation to practice: 

• Pick a consistent time - I like practicing in the morning before work, but you could easily choose a lunch break or evenings after the kiddos are off to sleep. If you practice at the same time everyday, you’ll eventually start craving it.

• Decide what you’re going to practice ahead of time - These days, I have a few teachers I love practicing with, and I’ll usually decide which teacher I want to practice with before I step over to my mat. This helps with any decision fatigue I might feel with the endless options of online guidance. If I’m practicing without a guide, I usually map out my practice according to a theme or goal so that I have something to work towards. I’ve never been one to just spontaneously bust out a yoga flow from my instincts--my brain works better with a plan.

• Keep your mat rolled out - If your mat stays rolled out, you will remind yourself of practice every-time you look at it. My yoga mat has become another piece of furniture in the living room--I only roll it up to vacuum or when we’re expecting company. 

Yoga At Home Logistics

Now that you’re motivated, it’s time to figure out the logistics of doing yoga at home. I’ve created three categories for logistics: the supplies we use to practice yoga (i.e. our mats), the teachers we choose to practice with, and the technology we use to practice. 

• Supplies - To begin with, just go out and get yourself a yoga mat. Any cheapo yoga mat is a good place to start. As you begin practicing, you’ll be able to assess what you like and don’t like about your mat and you’ll be able to invest in a better one down the road. Same thing goes for yoga props like blocks, straps, blankets, bolsters, etc. If you don’t have them to begin with, don’t sweat it--just get started and you’ll figure out the props later. Don’t let the logistics of supplies keep you from starting--just start and you’ll figure out what supplies you need later. You may even find that you can use common household objects that you already have instead of investing into yoga props, inviting you to revamp your relationship with the stuff you already own (one of my favorite things about my home yoga practice!).

• Teachers - The biggest difference between practicing yoga with a group versus at home is that your teacher can’t see you. When I talk to people about home yoga practices, that’s often cited as a prime reason for not practicing at home--people want to feel like they’re doing it right, and it’s thought that a teacher looking at you will be able to tell you this. I’m not saying that a real-life teacher isn’t  helpful, but in my experience, it is completely possible to have a thriving home yoga practice where a teacher never looks directly at your movements. Ideally, your teacher should help you become a smarter assessor of your own movement, rather than fostering dependence on them to tell you what’s right and wrong. But you do have to be willing to learn on your own if you want to make this work. The teachers I currently learn from online are the best teachers I’ve ever had, and none of them know my name or when I’m practicing with them. A great online yoga teacher will cue in a way where you don’t even need to look at the screen in order to know what’s going on (that’s what I strive for in my online classes!). Plenty of great teachers teach on YouTube, and others have membership platforms on their websites with hundreds of great classes to choose from (my favorites are Jenni Rawlings and Lara Heimann). Then there are the yoga websites that group classes from different teachers--sites like YogaGlo, Yoga International or Alo Moves. And the great thing is, online yoga teachers want to connect with their students. Every teacher usually teaches across multiple platforms like Instagram and through their email lists (we do both: Instagram and emails), and they’re easy to get ahold of to answer questions and work with you if and when you feel stuck.

• Technology - If you have an internet connection, you can practice with yoga teachers digitally at home. If your teachers teach through YouTube (like I do!), all you need to do is subscribe, download the YouTube app and select your practice. If your teachers have their own platforms, they’ve likely designed them to be mobile friendly or have built a companion app to make life easier. You can access classes for your phone, tablet, laptop, desktop, or even a TV (the Amazon fire stick will let you stream YouTube from your TV--here’s how to use it). Set up your device to the left, right or in front of your mat. I find that where I position my device usually doesn’t matter, I use my technology mostly to hear the instructions rather than watch the teacher on the screen. 

  • As a side note: If your internet connection is spotty, I recommend downloading your favorite classes so you don’t need to rely on internet access. Anything on YouTube can be downloaded using a third party app--a quick Google search for “download youtube videos” will get you plenty of options. 

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