Starting yoga practice at home is not difficult if you know what to do. If you are familiar with yoga, you will be able to easily manage the things, but if you are a beginner, this will look a bit more complicated; but don’t worry, I’ll show you how to do it.
The Best Way to Start Yoga At Home
The best way is to find the source of authentic information on yoga in a form suitable for easy following. Having a personal teacher or an experienced friend is the best way, but I guess not many of us can afford it, or have any access to such options. So, we are left with three main choices:
- Books
- Video
- Internet
Let’s see the pros and cons of each option.
Learning Yoga from Books
There are many books on yoga, but not all of them are authentic. Yet, there are great ones, which you can successfully use to study yoga at home. I would recommend “Yoga and Health” by S. Yesudian, “Asana. Pranayama. Mudra. Bandha” by Swami Satyananda, “Yoga Dipika” by Iyengar. These are the real yoga books, and suitable for beginners, especially the first one. I myself started learning yoga from these books (actually there was one more, called “Yoga Therapy” by Swami Sivananda).
When you find good books on yoga, you will be able to learn a lot from them. The downside is the absence of visual reference to yoga poses performance in motion (such as found on video), and the situations when the asana technique description is not clear and there is nobody to explain you.
Yoga Video and DVD
There are many yoga DVDs for beginners, so you won’t have any problems to buy one. The main problem is the same that is with books: not all of the information and techniques presented in the videos are authentic.
But if you find a good yoga DVD, then your home practice will get a good boost! Learning yoga from a video is one of the best budget options today.
The disadvantage of this approach is the said lack of real knowledge about yoga in many videos, and the necessity of additional equipment and the power source (so you will hardly be able to practice outside).
Can I Learn Yoga From Internet?
The main advantage of the Internet for yoga students is the easy access to the information, but this is its drawback as well. Why? Because it is difficult to discriminate what is worth your attention, and what is not. In other words, there is no authenticity filter online, and if you are a complete beginner you will find it difficult learning yoga from the Internet.
Can You Recommend Anything In Particular?
Yes, I can. Based on my own experience and on the recommendations of the reputed yoga teachers, I would advise either getting the book “Yoga and Health” by S. Yesudian or the video courses “Yoga for Beginners Boxed Set”. Of course, you can have them both. This would be a good start for doing yoga at home.