“Regularity, self-love and fun are just a few ways in which you can deepen your Yoga practice”.

When you think about levelling up your Yoga practice, you might imagine yourself doing deeper stretches, more challenging poses or longer, more complicated sequences.  These are all fine goals as long as they don’t disconnect you from the rest of your life.  A Yoga practice is not something that is supposed to exist in isolation.  It is meant to have an impact on the way you show up in your day-to-day life too.

Yoga practice can be shallow and incomplete without awareness and a sense of presence.  But there are simple, straightforward, logical and inspirational ways you can deepen and expand your Yoga practice on the mat and in your life.  Here’s how you can take your Yoga practice to a completely different level of meaning and awareness.

THE BENEFITS OF YOGA CLASS INSTRUCTION

Learning from a skilled Yoga instructor is invaluable to your Yoga practice.  A class offers something you can’t get when doing Yoga at home.  Having someone else orchestrating the session and calling out the poses challenges you to move in ways that might seem less comfortable or organic at first so you get out of your comfort zone.  It is particularly good for deepening the physical dimensions of your practice.

TRY YOGA JOURNALING

Yoga journaling is just a way to free-flow and write down whatever comes to mind about your practice.  When you start to notice the differences in your practice, you find you become much more open-minded about trying new ways of approaching different postures and techniques for practising. 

DEVELOP YOUR SENSITIVITY

How does one do this? Use your breath to gauge how far to go into a pose.  Often people go too far in their postures to the point where the breath gets constricted.  But actually, when you adopt a softer approach, it not only creates better alignment but it really allows your sensitivity to develop, feeling your breath and your body in space.  Try to balance strength with flexibility in equal measures, balancing effort and ease.

STUDY THE PHILOSOPHY

You probably know that Yoga is a discipline that focuses on the harmony of the mind, body and spirit.  By reading various texts about Yoga, you’ll develop a deeper appreciation of the practice, thus taking your own Yoga practice to a deeper spiritual level.  When you practise Yoga, you want to have a better sense of personal awareness and enhance your life spiritually too.  Then you can take your practice up a notch through the Yoga of knowledge.