The regular practice of yoga can be highly beneficial to your health. Besides improving your posture and relaxing your entire body, yoga can also strengthen your body and improve your mental well-being. With all these benefits, it is no surprise that yoga is becoming increasingly popular for people who want a healthier and more well-balanced lifestyle. Here, Russell Jack, a Southland-based yoga instructor, shares his best practices for aspiring yoga practitioners.
All You Need Is Practice
As with most of the worthwhile things in life, you only get the full benefits with frequent practice. If you are new to yoga, then you should practice it as often as possible. You need to regularly practice all of the yoga positions, including those you have the most problems with. Sticking to the ones you can do with ease will not take you very far. Seek advice from a yoga teacher if there any poses that you find difficult to complete correctly.
Check Your Ego
Yoga is not an activity for showing off. You need to concentrate on every single pose until you get it right, not worry about how you look to others. You need to take advice from teachers or more advanced students if you want to master every pose. Don’t be worried about seeming foolish. If you are humble enough to ask for help and care only about getting better, you will soon get better results.
Yoga Is as Much About Mental Achievements as It Is About Physical Ones
You should never consider that you are a failure at yoga if you do not match or even exceed how far others go in their practice. Yoga is all about the mental achievements you make, instead of how far you can stretch when attempting specific poses. Having the right frame of mind when performing yoga is much more important than how far you can bend or stretch.
A Yoga Student Is Only as Good as Their Instructor
Online blogs and instruction videos cannot teach you as much as having an experienced instructor. Especially at the beginning stages, you need an interactive instructor who can correct your specific mistakes and give you advice tailored to you. The best yoga instructors not only provide tips and instructions, but they also encourage their students to continually improve and provide them with the confidence to do so.
Have Patience
You should not get discouraged if you are improving slowly, especially if you have just started practicing yoga. Yoga is not a race, and everybody develops at their own pace. Yoga is a means to improve both mind and body, and you will see the benefits you are after if you have patience.
Final Thoughts
If you follow the advice given above, you can look forward to many years of happily practicing yoga and receiving all of the benefits it can provide. A new, healthier, more relaxed life awaits you.
About Russell Jack
Russell Jack is a yoga and mindfulness teacher from Southland, New Zealand. He specializes in Vinyasa Yoga, Qigong, and guided meditations, helping clients achieve harmony of body, mind, and soul. Russell is passionate about animal rights protection, regularly volunteering with the World Animal Protection Organization and donating to protect endangered species in New Zealand.