Customizing Your Practice

by Baxter

Dancers Practicing At The Barre by Edgar Degas

It is easy for us all to go to a class and be lead through a wonderful, balanced practice, but it�s quite a challenge for most people to come up with a similar practice on their own. However, one of the important advantages of practicing at home is being able to customize your practice for your particular needs and desires on a given day. But if designing a yoga practice from scratch is too overwhelming to consider, a good way first step is to tinker a bit with a practice that you found on our blog, elsewhere online, or in a book. It�s simpler than you might imagine!

In this post we�ll make some basic recommendations for how you can customize any practice to make it:

• More gentle
• More vigorous
• Shorter or longer
• Adapted to your particular limitations

Making a Practice More Gentle

You can make any practice more gentle by:

1. For dynamic poses, do fewer repetitions, for example, do 3 rounds of dynamic Warrior 2 instead of 6.
2. For static poses, use shorter holds, for example, hold Warrior 3 pose for 3 instead of 6.
3. For restorative poses, extend your time in the poses.
4. Leave out the most vigorous pose or poses from the sequence, either just skipping them or replacing them with gentle or restorative poses. 
5. Between active poses, rest in Savanana or another resting pose.

Making a Practice More Vigorous

You can take any practice, other than a restorative practices and make it more vigorous in the following simple ways: 

1. For dynamic poses, add more repetitions, for example, do 10 rounds of dynamic Warrior 2 instead of 6.
2. For static poses, extend your holds, for example, hold Warrior 3 pose for 10 or 12 breaths instead of 6. And instead of doing poses only once, you can repeat them a second of third time.
3. Repeat a series of static pose an extra time.
4. Add in any poses you feel are more vigorous for you, placing them after the warm-up poses and before the cooling down poses.

Making a Practice Shorter or Longer

We all feel the time crunch now and then, and, conversely, sometimes find that we have extra time on a given day. You can easily adjust the length of your practice depending on how much time you have to devote to it on any given day. 

To shorten a practice:

1. For dynamic poses, do fewer repetitions. 
2. For static poses, use shorter holds.
3. Eliminate any poses from the sequence that are less appealing today. Just be sure to keep in at least some of the initial warm-up poses and at least one cool-down pose. 

To lengthen a practice:

1. Lengthen your time in some of the poses, either increasing repetitions of dynamic poses or extending your holds in static or restorative poses. 
2. Repeat your favorite pose or poses a few times.
3. Add in more poses of the same type. For example, in a backbend sequence, add in more backbends, or in a strength building sequence, add in more strength building poses.
4. Add in a short meditation or breath practice that is not in the sequence.
5. Rest in Savanana or another resting pose between poses.
6. Take an extra long time in Savasana.

Adapting a Practice to Your Limitations

Injury. You can still practice with an injury by adapting the individual poses to your limitations. For example, with shoulder injury, you can keep your arms down at your sides in many standing poses or practice the wall version of Downward-Facing Dog pose instead of the full version. For those poses you cannot adapt, you can simply skip them, for example, skip Plank pose with a shoulder injury. When you�re in the acute and recovery phrases of an injury, floor sequences and chair variations are good substitutions. 

Illness. When you are ill or recovering from an illness, focus on gentle, restorative practices until you recover. When you�re ready for a gentle practice, use our recommendations above to make your first active practice days easier.

Disability. If you�re working with a longer-term disability, adapt your practice as we described for an injury. Because you'll be practicing this way for a long period of time, it may also be worth getting special guidance from a skilled teacher for creative ways you can adapt various poses to your condition.

Have fun practicing! And don't be afraid to get creative.

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Energizing Yourself: Overcoming Styana and Alasya (Rerun)

by Nina

Women and Birds at Sunrise by Joan Miro*

I don�t know about you, but Ram�s post The Dangers of Being Sedentary scared me a bit. 

Findings from a recent study showed that individuals who sat for more than 11 hours daily were 40 percent more likely to die within the next three years than those who sat for four hours or less daily�even when people�s physical activity at other times of the day was accounted for. Studies have also indicated that sitting daily for less than 3 hours and watching TV for less than 2 hours extends life expectancy by an estimated 1 to 2 years. Studies reported in the prestigious journals Lancet and the British Medical Journal suggest that a sedentary lifestyle is the cause of one in 10 deaths worldwide. It�s now known that Americans are working less (26 minutes a day less compared to Y2007) and idling off more. Adults in the U.S. spend an average of 55 percent of their day engaged in some kind of sedentary behavior (see Sedentary behaviour and life expectancy in the USA: a cause-deleted life table analysis).

In his post, Ram identified two obstacles that cause us to be sedentary: styana (inefficiency, idleness, procrastination, dullness) and alasya (laziness, sloth). The problem is, how do we overcome these obstacles? I mean, we all basically know that sitting around all day isn�t a good thing, but after hours of doing it�so many of us sit at desks all day or have long commutes�inertia tends to set in. And this can create a lot of resistance to the idea of getting up to practice yoga, even if you know it will be good for you and that you�ll feel better afterward. You think: Oh, I just don�t feel like it today�maybe tomorrow.

"Old man, stiff man, weak man, sick man, they can all take practice but only a lazy man can't take practice." � Sri K. Pattabhi Jois

I know this because even after years of practicing yoga at home on my own, I sometimes notice that tendency in myself. I do have some tricks up my sleeve, however. And I thought today would be a good day to share them, so you�d have some new ideas for fighting both styana and alysya.

My first trick is a mental one: I tell myself that I don�t need to do a full practice, that I can just do one single pose, you know, like Downward-Facing Dog. But I might want to warm up a bit before that one, so, let�s see, maybe a Half Downward-Facing Dog at the wall followed by a full Downward-Facing Dog on my mat. And guess what, by that time, my energy starts flowing and my momentum starts to build, and I end up doing a full-length practice.

My second trick is to pick a pose to start that will energize me, even just a bit. I know that moving with your breath is a good way to fire up your energy. So standing in Mountain pose and raising arms overhead on the inhalation and down by your sides on the exhalation is a good way to energize yourself, maybe even shake off a feeling of depression, and that can lead to some other vinyasas or who knows where.

But if you don�t feel like standing up�yeah, I know, sometimes you just don�t�you can get on your hands and knees and do the Cat-Cow pose, inhaling as you come into the Cow position (the sway back position) and exhaling as you come into the Cat pose (the arching position). That leads very nicely into Downward-Facing Dog pose, and then maybe Standing Forward Bend, by which time you might feel ready to stand up on your mat!

My third trick is that when I�m feeling particularly tired or lazy, I tell myself that I can start lying down. Ah, yes, lying down sounds real good.

Often I start with Reclined Leg Stretch and other reclined hip openers, and even just moving my legs around gets me in the mood for a Downward-Facing Dog pose (and helps make that pose easier), which in turn leads....

Another way to energize yourself is to open your chest, and that�s also a good way to counteract all the forward bending you�ve been doing by sitting down for hours. Good news is this is also something you can do lying down. Try a passive backbend over a blanket roll or a bolster for three or more minutes (see Featured Pose: Supported Backbend). Then roll over and see what you might feel like doing next. Lately I�ve been starting by doing a reclined shoulder opener that my teacher often has us do in the middle of class: lying on your back, with a strap just above your elbows, bring your arms up and overhead (if they don�t reach the floor, try holding a block between your hands). Three minutes of that, and if I�m not ready for Downward-Facing Dog pose, I might procrastinate a bit with some reclined hip stretches. It�s all good. 

And if this strategy doesn�t work? What if you only end up doing just the one or two poses? Well, that�s much better than nothing. It might even start a new habit that will allow you to gradually grow into a longer practice over time�my own home practice started with me practicing just a few poses. And, besides, you can always try again in a couple of hours....

Of course, what I�ve mentioned here are just a few of many possibilities. Readers, how do you shake off your lethargy and start moving? I�d love to hear your recommendations.

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