Welcome Beginners!
When you’re brand new to yoga, it can feel intimidating and be difficult to know exactly where and how to get started. Our Yoga for Beginners newsletter was created specifically for you—to give you all the tips, guidelines, and recommendations you will need to start a successful yoga practice. To ensure your success, we highly recommend you read this entire newsletter before attempting any yoga.
What Is Yoga?
Yoga is a vast collection of spiritual techniques and practices
aimed at integrating mind, body, and spirit to achieve a state of enlightenment or oneness with the universe. What is normally thought of as “yoga” in the West is really Hatha Yoga, one of the many paths of yoga. The different paths of yoga emphasize different approaches and techniques but ultimately lead to the same goal of unification and enlightenment.
Hatha Yoga attains the union of mind-body-spirit through a practice of asana (yoga postures), pranayama (yoga breathing) , Mudra (body gestures) and Shatkarma (internal cleansing). These physical practices are used to purify the body and cultivate Prana (life-force energy). Modern Yoga studios do not emphasize many of these esoteric practices and instead focuses more on the physical yoga postures. But at Yogagyani, you will learn the most intricate and authentic practices of Yoga, anatomy and philosophy. These things are essential for a beginner to start his/her journey.
Regardless of what your goals or intentions are for starting a yoga practice, just the yoga poses themselves is a fantastic form of mental and physical exercise.
Is Yoga Right for You?
Yoga is in no way exclusive—being able to practice yoga does not matter how old you are, how much you weigh, what you do for a living, where you live or what religion you practice. Yoga is accessible for just about everyone.
How to Practice Yoga
Beginner yoga – Yoga is typically performed in bare feet on a sticky yoga mat with optional yoga props. The yoga movements and poses require clothes that can stretch and move freely with your body. You can purchase clothing specifically designed for yoga practice, but you probably can put together a comfortable outfit from your existing wardrobe to get started.
How Often Should I Do Yoga?
If you can practice yoga 3 or more times per week, you will see significant improvements in your flexibility, range of motion, strength, balance, inner peace, and overall well being. Ideally, we recommend shorter and more frequent sessions, 20-45 minutes long, and for a total of 3-4 hours spread over several days. Practicing yoga less than this amount will still be beneficial, but you will see smaller improvements over a longer period of time. Like most things, the more time you can dedicate towards it, the more benefits you will receive.
The Benefits of Practicing Yoga
The benefits of yoga are almost endless! Practicing yoga helps build healthy virtues and good values, such as discipline, honesty, devotion, self-inquiry, mindfulness, and non-attachment. Yoga empowers you to make conscious choices toward living a more healthy and fulfilling life. Yoga also helps you:
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