How to Practice Yoga, some Do’s and Don’ts to avoid discomfort, injury and other pitfalls?

Food:

Healthy eating is as important as any other aspect, try food combining and a high percentage of live raw foods (salads especially) with each meal. Do yourself a favor and wait at least 3 hours after a substantial meal before you practice yoga.

Timing:

Try doing yoga in the morning as well as in the evening (not necessarily on the same day!). This way you get to work on your ‘morning body’ which might be a bit stiffer, but is a lot quieter, than your ‘evening body’.

Comfort:

Make sure you are fully comfortable- notice what you are wearing and where you are practicing. Prepare a nice environment and comfortable clothes that allow your mind to rest during your practice.

Cleanliness:

Shower before your practice – especially helpful in preparation for morning practices, or if you tend to get drowsy.

Self-learning:

Use yoga classes to gather information which you then apply by cultivating your ‘inner teacher’, giving yourself detailed instruction on each asana while you are in it.

Compassion:

Work within your comfort zone. 70% is enough. Stay in comfort zone where you can work and move with an open heart, accepting the uncomfortable sensations as part of the self-growth factor.

Teacher-Student relationship:

Develops healthily on a basis of mutual respect, with the student arriving with healthy intention and motivation and the teacher respecting and encouraging the student’s intuition and experience.

Good pain vs. Bad pain:

Only you know how the posture feels for you. Discover what good and bad pain feels like and steer clear of bad pains, which are sharp & acute, lasting after the posture is over or even after class. Knees and lower back are especially sensitive areas, damage is often irreversable, so best prevent it!.When experiencing ‘bad’ pain, remember to stay calm, breath and gently lengthen your limbs as you come out of the posture. Remember that getting out of a posture safely is done as carefully as you entered it.

Visualisation:

Be patient with yourself when you are not moving into a posture readily. Develop inner calm and trust as you continue to breath, elongate and talk yourself through the movement of the posture, visualizing it as you speak yourself through it! Where the mind goes the body follows, you are putting in motion a powerful chain of events, where your mind is instructing the bones, muscles and subtle systems to move and they quite quickly get the message and move exactly as you instruct, it just takes time for you to see this as the joints are often calcified and stiff and the muscles tight or short…with regular practice you will see results!

Healthy heart, healthy mind:

Never underestimate the power of yoga to develop the very qualities you bring to it! When we bring a strong desire for health and peacefulness that is what we receive. Flip side is that when we bring competitiveness and desire for outer beauty or acrobatic performance, that is what we receive.