10 Key Points About Your Practices![]() We all do can accept that our understanding about yoga was simple yoga postures in beginning. As the time gone our understanding about yoga got better and we began to know that yoga was not just about yoga poses. We all begun with a baby steps in it and taken a grown path slowly. Yoga is a long term lifetime practice. For maintaining our yoga practice for the life term need commitment and dedication. Many of them continue their practice for the life term and many of them give up mostly because of injuries. To maintain the life term yoga we have to practice it safely. Here I am trying to add or remind is the most 10 key points about our own yoga practice whenever we are on the yoga mat. Most of the time we do remember these all key points, still it's just a reminder. 1. Practice with devotion without competition Yoga is a practice of knowing our own potentials and limits. It's not a competition sports. It's an action to surrender our own ego and improve the self respects. A yoga practice without devotion is similar to having a bicycle without tyres which will bring the damages and confusions in future. Some of them even leaves the practices of yoga with injuries and discouragement. The part of devotion leads to understand the self through even from the physical - gymnastic yoga practices. 2. Warm up enough before go deeper Warm up all the body parts enough before get into the deeper yoga poses. This will help you to follow through the practices without any injuries. How much we need to warm up? It's depend on persons and which room you practices. Flexible person needs less warm up and tight muscles person need more warm up. Warm weather or room need less warm ups and cold weather or room need more warm ups. A good supply of blood to the muscle fibres helps to stretch easier. Take enough warm up in joints and take few rounds of Surya Narmaskar before get into the deeper stretches will be always a good choise to avoid injuries. 3. Breathe in and out Conscious controlled breathe always helps to calm the mind and gives enough oxygen supply to the muscle fibres. Comfortableness always gets in the yoga practices is through the conscious controlled breathing. Yoga uses the breathe as the medium to control the mind. 4. Hold the bandhas (energic locks) Especially when you are practicing the Vinyasa or dynamic practices in yoga always hold the two bandhas (Uddhiyana - Abdominal Lock & Moola - Root Lock). Uddhiyana Bandha stabilises the lower back and Moola Bandha stabilises the hips; which helps to practice without injuries. Father of modern Hatha Yoga, Sri. T. Krishnamacharya mentions that don't practice vinyasa without bandhas. 5. Be 100% on the mat Whenever you are on the yoga mat on a practice, forget all other things. Be on the yoga mat 100% on that present moment on what you doing. Most of the yoga practitioners faces the injuries because of not being on present 100% on the yoga mat. The level of focus is different to the different people, but yoga mat is a place cultivating and improving that skills of being on the present moment through improving the awareness. Some of the teacher told that Yoga is Awareness. 6. Give enough space in joints Whenever gets a sensation of compression or tension in any yoga pose, care that more seriously. Sensation of compression or tension gets because in lack of space within the joint. There is not much space have between two bones (joint). A comfortable joint always have enough space between bones. No space, no comfortableness. Have space, have comfortableness. Injury mostly gets in the joints because in lack of spaces. 7. Take enough rests Whenever gets tiredness, take enough rest between poses or movements. Take nearest restorative yoga poses (eg. child pose, crocodile pose, corpse pose, etc) is the best choice in a practice. 8. Take challenges with a smile Mind have a rhythm to do things when you do things everyday. Sometime, we are lazy to take a step ahead and see how it goes. Take challenges in everyday practices ahead, but safely. This is a step to challenging yourself to be always alive by boosting the heart beats. 9. Upgrade / Read your learnings in a while Upgrading your understanding about yoga or yoga poses once in a while is important. Joining a yoga retreat or yoga workshops once in a while is a good choice to improve your understanding or reminding your knowledges about yoga practices. 10. Don't ever avoid the final Savasana Final relaxation is one of the most important part of our practices. In one yoga section, we try to calm our body systems including nervous system, then stimulates and tunes that system, at the end we cool down that all systems through that beautiful state of stillness of Savasana. Avoiding final Savasana (relaxation) will lead to sensitive body systems and it's more harming than helpful yoga practices. These all are the main 10 key points to remind ourselves while we get into the yoga practices. Hope it is helpful for you, if yes, then don't hesitate to share it with your friends. A piece of knowledge is better than nothing. Om! Rajeev, ERYT500
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