Do you Need to be at a Studio to Practice Yoga? - 4 minutes read
Inspire Yoga intentionally does not have a private yoga studio because we believe that yoga can be practiced anywhere, we are dropping the barriers to practicing yoga, you don’t need to find a class that suits your needs, and you don’t need to match a class time to your schedule, you don’t need to commute to a specific location to have the class. Instead, we come to you, we tailor the class based on your preferences, we schedule the class around your availability and a private yoga teacher personally hosts each class wherever you are, in the comfort and convenience of your home or office.
Practicing yoga in your space helps to mold the energy of that environment to what you want, bringing a sanctuary of peace in your living room helps you enjoy that calm when you are home. Likewise, our corporate yoga classes are popular because we transform the office, a place associated with high stress and pressure, into a haven of tranquil energy to balance the workplace and create an environment that is inviting, relaxing, and inspiring.
When we can feel calm in the places we occupy the most frequently then we can benefit from that relaxing vibration even when things are getting busy and frenetic, we can feel more centered faster and more easily than having to run to a spa to feel relaxed.
As we associate our natural environment to our yoga practice we are more likely to roll out our mat and practice yoga, even for a few minutes if we are in the same space that we have our classes in. It’s like doing work in a yoga studio, it’s would feel normal to get up and stretch once in a while because it’s contextually appropriate, if we do yoga in the office or at home, even if the yoga teacher isn’t there the association of that space to be kind to yourself, move and release tension, your habit becomes reinforced by your environment.
We have had clients naturally do some deep breathing exercises before a big presentation or a conference call at work because they are used to doing mindfulness exercises in the office. Or another client sculpting a home practice for himself and practicing on his own in his bedroom because he had a private teacher train him at home for 8 years. It’s about habit formation and creating a lifestyle change.
There are many who religiously go to the studio to practice in class but would never dare roll their yoga mat and do some stretching at home because it feels to ‘unfamiliar’ to them, this association to yoga then becomes the studio space rather than their own personal practice.
The most important aspect of yoga is that it’s a practice that allows you to go inward, to check in with yourself, notice where you are holding the stress in your body, notice your ability to relax, notice your own state of mind. To go inward you need to feel completely at ease, there is nowhere better than to do this while you are in a comfortable setting, like your own home where you feel relaxed and free from any judgement.
Unfortunately, in crowded yoga studios our attention goes outward rather than inward, we bring our competitive nature to yoga classes, we notice how far the person next to us is stretching or how long the person in front of us can hold a balancing pose, our attention goes outward where we compare our practice with those around us, this sacrifices the main objective of a yoga practice; the mindful and accepting component that the practice offers ourselves. When yoga practitioners get competitive and try to out-last, out-bend, out-stretch each other is when we lose contact to what our body needs at the moment and we push ourselves and our ego-mind drives the class, this often results in injury.
When we can go inward to a quiet and safe space of one on one yoga where the focus in on self care in the comfort of our own home then great transformation ensues.