Yoga at Home for $2 a Month
There are a LOT of great reasons to practice yoga at home on your own:
1-You have work and/or family responsibilities that make it impossible to consistently get to a yoga class. This may be especially true for new parents who are juggling jobs, childcare and EVERYTHING!
2-You travel often and wish you had a practice you could take with you on the road
3-It’s a great way to advance your practice and always do the poses and exercises that best support you in how you feel (if you’re calling the shots, then you don’t have to do any handstands if you don’t want to!).
4-If you are not feeling well, are injured or need a modified practice for any reason, you can learn how to do a practice that will help you feel better
5-You want to make yoga a part of everyday—a real part of your life and not just a class or workshop that you take every once in a while.
Many of my students ask me how to start a home practice and how to be consistent about practicing at home. For them, and for you, I have designed a great home practice that can be done anywhere by anyone. In just 10-minutes a day, you will feel a huge improvement in how you feel. I am charging $24 for 12-months of home practice support. Here are the details:
Yoga Matrika invites YOU to Make 2010 the Year
YOU Develop a Home Yoga Practice.
We welcome everyone to become a part of this yoga-based resolution revolution! You don’t have to live in Pittsburgh and we hope that EVERYONE will take advantage of this project that invites you to make yoga and meditation a part of EVERY day of your life in a gentle and flexible way. This program is for yogis of all ages, experience levels and physical abilities.
Here is how it works:
STEP 1: Pay the fees for home practice or make a donation
The cost for the basic home practice and one year of home yoga practice support is $24. You can make a payment online at the bottom of this page.
STEP 2: You will receive a BASIC HOME PRACTICE in the mail to the mailing address you provide when you make payment.
This home practice will take most adults 10-15 minutes to complete. Modifications for practice in a chair or lying down can be provided upon request. The home practice guide will include pictures and text that describe the poses and exercises. If you ever have any questions, there will be support contact information provided in your WELCOME KIT.
STEP 3: Every month, you will receive an e-mail newsletter that will provide an additional 5-10 minutes of practice ideas so that you can slowly expand the amount of time you are spending on your home practice through the 12-months of the program.
By the end of one year, you will have:
1-A basic home practice that you can do anytime and anywhere in 10-15 minutes.
2-Three different 1-hour long home practices that you can do:
#1: Home Practice for Low Back and Hips
#2: Home Practice for Stress Relief
#3: Home Practice to Relieve Tension in the Head, Neck and Shoulders
3-Home Yoga & Meditation practices for anywhere between 10-minutes and 1-hour so you will always have a plan for your home practice no matter how much or how little time you have.
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER I SIGN-UP?
When you sign-up for home practice support, you will receive a Welcome Kit that will include the BASIC HOME PRACTICE. The basic home practice is designed to take 10-15 minutes and includes some breathing practices, stretching and relaxation. We suggest that you start by making a commitment to doing 10-minutes of yoga a day for 5-days per week. It’s more important that you are consistent about practicing every day than the amount of time you spend every day. You will be amazed at how different you feel with just 10-minutes of practice!
One month after you sign-up for the home practice support, you will begin to receive monthly e-mail newsletters that provide an additional 5-minutes to add on to your basic practice until you have an hour-long home practice with variations for low back and hip care, stress, and tension in head, neck and shoulders. You will also receive yoga and meditation tips in every newsletter that will help inspire your practice and keep it fresh. It is ALWAYS your choice how much or how little of the practice you do. This practice is designed so that, no matter how much or how little time you have, you can always have a great plan for a 10-minute, 20-minute, 40-minute or hour long practice and everything in between.
You don’t need any special equipment or clothing to practice yoga at home. It is suggested that you decide on a place for your practice and consistently use that place (it can be ANYWHERE that you have floor space—kitchen, hallway, ANYWHERE). Many people find that it is helpful to have a yoga mat and to keep it within view so that you can just throw your mat down and practice when you have a few minutes.
We also recommend that you take a minimum of 2-yoga classes a month with a qualified teacher at a studio in your area. It’s a good idea to go to a class so that you can receive adjustments to your poses, be a part of a supportive yoga community and receive the benefits of an inspiring practice. You will learn new poses and new ideas and you can always incorporate what you like the most into your home practice. Practicing on your own and practicing with a group is a very different experience. It’s important to have both of these types of experiences in order to advance your practice AND to keep your home practice fresh and exciting.
Your 2010 home practice will also include reading the following two books:
1. Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul
by Deepak Chopra. 2009
2. The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of
Happiness by Youngey Mingyur Rinpoche. 2007
Each monthly e-newsletter will include information from these texts to inspire your practice and to keep your practice engaged with yoga philosophy.
You don’t have to buy these books, but we think you’ll want to so you can read them again and again and again!—You can borrow them from the library, create a home practice group with friends and collectively own one set of the texts, etc. If you do buy them and you have a local book shop, please order it through them or ask them to carry these titles. If not, then the book titles are linked to information that will help you purchase them online. If you live in or around the Pittsburgh Metro area, we recommend Joseph Beth Booksellers on the South Side. They should have these books in stock for you or they can order them!
If you are interested, please go to http://www.yogamatrika.com//practiceyoga-at-home/
for more details and to sign-up for home practice support.
Posted by Sharon Fennimore Rudyk
Owner and Director, Yoga Matrika
http://www.sharonrudykyoga.info
http://www.yogamatrika.com/
http://www.prenatalyogapittsburgh.com
Yoga Works
I’m just about as committed, or perhaps even MORE committed, to the “Why?” as anyone. I think it’s a rather good question to be asked about anything from WHY is the Nobel peace prize winner suggesting that we increase our war activities to WHY do Pittsburghers call sprinkles, “jimmies”. Or, the yoga owner gasps, WHY should anyone do yoga? Just as committed as I am to the WHY, I’m simply frustrated at the infinite number of things that I can’t seem to comprehend or the number of WHY questions that I can’t get a satisfactory answer to. Will someone just give me the satisfaction of a BECAUSE… every once in a while?
If there is one thing that I know to be true and that is that YOGA WORKS. I mean, it works for EVERYONE—children, moms, men, women, older people, teens, injured and sick, athletic and healthy, flexible, idiots and genius alike (generally subjective measurements anyway!)—–yoga works in all cases and without exception. Why? I have no idea! I’m relatively convinced that any answer is only the beginning of an answer or even a fraction of the answer. I don’t care if you got this answer by measuring brain activity, hormone levels, blood chemicals, stress level, decrease in headaches, reported relationship satisfaction, increased fertility, etc. However you get your answer to the why of yoga, it’s only part of the story. The most terrifying thing about this kind of inquiry is that I wonder how many questions I have asked and found an answer to that I really only know the fraction of—maybe WHY just isn’t the right question and every BECAUSE is merely a PERHAPS in disguise?
I can think of two reasons why yoga decreases stress, makes us feel stronger and lighter and gives us energy and a feeling of bliss and joy:
1) We are moving in the most honest of ways and using our body to express, explore and respond to the environment around us instead of privileging the BRAIN and simply dragging the body around as a useful, but mostly frustrating appendage. So many people tell me that they can’t do yoga because they aren’t flexible or because they aren’t “the type.” If yoga was about touching your toes, then I can assure you gentle reader that 20 million Americans wouldn’t be doing yoga! And, I might ask, who is the yoga type and how do you know it doesn’t apply to you if you never try? As you are reading this, I happen to know that you are a live human and you have a body. This being the case, you are, in fact, just the right “type” for yoga. All you need is to be breathing and have a body and yoga will work for you!
2) Yoga is a vacation. When you practice yoga, you lighten your load—you slow down the breath, you take off your shoes and socks, you notice sensations in your body and you shut up. I don’t mean that you just stop talking. I mean that you stop talking, people stop talking to you and you can finally hear yourself think. For beginners, this is a terrifying moment because when you hear yourself think for the first time you can be overwhelmed to discover just how many thoughts you are having every minute or even every second. This flood of thoughts, ideas, feelings, desires, stories and much more just flood over you and once you become aware of this you start to say, “THINKING” and return your awareness to your breath. Ahhh—now isn’t that delightful? It’s not something you can say to your boss–right? Boss sticks her head in your cubicle and starts talking really fast about some immediate emergency double secret deadline and you can’t just say, “THINKING” and turn away! But in yoga, you even get a vacation from yourself and all the trappings and trimmings you have determined as elements of that self. You lighten your load by slowing down, removing obstacles to calm and getting out of your own way. You CAN say to yourself, “THINKING.”
So try a yoga class and move your body and breathe and, well, get out of your own way!
Posted by Sharon Rudyk, Owner and Director of Yoga Matrika (http://www.yogamatrika.com/) and Prenatal Yoga Pittsburgh (http://www.prenatalyogapittsburgh.com) in Point Breeze, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15217.
I’d like to give an appropriate reference to Pema Chodron, a most wonderful writer and teacher who suggests the concept of saying “Thinking” to yourself during meditation when you start to lose your focus or awareness. My personal favorite Pema Chodron title is, “The Wisdom of No Escape,” but you can try any title for excellent meditation information and practical advice and instruction.