You can practice yoga with your Wii or DVD at home
- You have a yoga program on your Wii that you can practice with.
- You have all kinds of yoga DVDs that you can study and practice with.
Why with all of this yoga material at home would you want to get out of the house and travel to a yoga studio to practice with a yoga teacher.
And to top it all off, you have to pay for every time you practice with a yoga teacher. Each time you use your Wii program or your DVDs there is no cost.
Given all of this why should you practice with a yoga teacher as well.
You can learn quite a bit from your yoga teacher that you can not learn from your Wii program. We will cover three of things here:
- Focused practice
- Proper technique
- The best path
The first point is about focused practice.
1 – Focused practice
When you practice with a yoga teacher either one on one or in a group there is a lot more energy in the room. You automatically become more focused on your practice.
You are less likely to abandon your practice part way through. You are unlikely to be interrupted by your family or the phone or whatever else when you practice with your teacher.
You tend to try harder in a group setting. Part of this because of the other people present and part of it is because you are more focused on your practice. You are in the yoga practice space. We practice yoga here. We are not here to socialize or lounge around.
Practicing with a yoga teacher will get you more focused on your yoga practice.
Lets move on to point 2 and talk about proper technique and what a yoga teacher can do for you here.
2 – Proper technique
A yoga teacher can watch you do a yoga pose and they can provide direct and immediate feedback.
They can correct any mistakes that you are doing in a pose.
Quite often you will do a pose and think that you have everything in correct alignment and your yoga teacher will come along and give you some adjustments to improve your alignment.
A yoga teacher is able to look at your yoga pose from all angles and make very minor corrections that will prevent you from injuring yourself.
These adjustments will allow you to get more benefit from a particular yoga pose with safety.
Now that you have learned the proper technique for a doing yoga pose there is one more important point to consider that only a yoga teacher can give you. And that point is the best path.
3 – The best path
A yoga teacher is able to look at you and your ability to do a particular pose. Based on your current flexibility your yoga teacher will be able to provide some modifications to the particular pose that you are doing or they may even suggest and alternative pose all together.
If you have an injury, your yoga teacher will be able to take that into account and provide once again modifications and alternatives that will protect the injury and help it to recover.
Your yoga teacher is able to provide encouragement and direct feed back as you are working on a yoga pose.
They help you find the best path to learn a pose that is appropriate for you current flexibility and ability.
Your yoga teacher will be able to provide you with just enough challenging poses based on your current flexibility and ability so that you are comfortably challenged and not overwhelmed or discouraged.
Providing the best path
When I was learning a particular pose several years ago, my teacher gave me a set of goals to work towards. She would guide me along the path towards these goals by providing adjustments and encouragement as I was working on the pose.
Once I reached the set of goals that she had laid out she said “This is very good. Now it is time to move on to the next set of goals.”
She proceeded to lay out these new goals and demonstrate how to do the pose to the next stage given my current state of flexibility.
By introducing the pose in stages she prevented me from becoming overwhelmed and discouraged.
What will you do with your Wii and DVDs now
Now that you are going to a yoga teacher what are you going to do with your Wii program and DVDs.
Use the material you have at home in combination with what you are learning at the yoga studio with your teacher. You will find that you can use all three sources in combination to enhance your learning.
Often when someone else demonstrate or describes how to do a yoga pose you will gain some new insight. So the Wii program, the DVDs and the teacher are all providing different insights into the same poses.
And you will be able to discuss this new insight with your yoga teacher the next time you see them.
Summary
A yoga teacher in combination with your Wii and DVDs can help you to learn yoga faster and safer than a Wii program or a DVD alone.
A yoga teacher will provide you with a focused practice where you will try harder and learn faster.
A yoga teacher will teach you proper technique, correct any errors and make sure that you do not injury yourself.
And finally a yoga teacher will take you down the best path for you to develop your yoga practice. They will provide you with appropriate goals that match your current level of flexibility and ability.
Next Steps
Get out of the house and find a yoga teacher to learn yoga from. You will be glad you did.
