Amp Up Your Yoga Practise with These Tools and Tips

Article by: Sheila Johnson

Yoga can provide you with more flexibility, better cardio health, reduced stress, and enhanced athletic performance. To truly enjoy the many benefits of yoga, you might need to amp up your workout.

Doing so can be easy when you take advantage of these tools and tips.  

#1. Set Goals and Use Technology to Track Them

As Verywell Fit explains, setting goals is a great motivator. It will give you something to shoot for and help you feel good about your accomplishments. Your goals could be as simple as holding a certain pose longer or learning a new style of yoga. You may even wish to perfect your poses or increase the intensity of your sessions. Whatever your goals are, it’s important for you to have a method of tracking them.

Fortunately, there are several apps that you can download to help you keep up with goals and push yourself further. Many of them provide voice or video instruction along with motivational music, and they allow you to pick your milestones and monitor your improvement. You can even download the majority of them for free. 

#2. Find Leadership that Inspires You

Your relationship with your instructor will affect your ability to learn, and may even determine whether you continue with your practice. Ideally, you should find a yoga teacher who is patient and willing to provide personalized instruction as needed.

On-the-spot corrections should be made as gently as possible, as the goal should be to help you learn new poses, not to make you feel embarrassed about mistakes.

An instructor’s previous experience and certifications can give you an idea as to how knowledgeable he or she is. Accordingly, you should ask how long an individual has been teaching, and find out about any credentials that a person holds from a Registered Yoga School (RYS). While not required, a teaching certificate does show that an instructor has taken some additional steps and is therefore serious about helping others become more proficient.

#3. Become Comfortable with Seven-Minute Workout Sessions

Men’s Health notes one of the biggest reasons people give for failing to keep up with a fitness regimen involves time. Many individuals believe that to be successful, they must engage in yoga for 30 to 60 minutes or more each day. When they can’t find the time for such a long routine, they eventually become discouraged and quit. While you can enjoy more benefits from a longer workout, you can also improve by exercising just a few short minutes each session – and it’s certainly better than no program at all.

With that in mind, give yourself permission to do yoga out for as little as seven minutes daily. You can still achieve quite a few benefits in that amount of time, and can even fit your yoga routine into your lunch hour or coffee break.

That way, you’ll be less prone to skip days, making it more likely you will continue with your yoga practice. Wear some comfortable and versatile clothes like leggings, so you’ll be able to practice whenever you need to.  

Are you ready to amp things up? These tips will help you take your yoga routine to the next level so you can experience even more advantages than you ever thought possible. Keep them in mind so that you can make the most of this ancient form of exercise.