ABCs for home practice

Editor's note: Kate Connell is a private yoga teacher who helps yogis create and sustain an at-home yoga practice. The Mat Mate, a weekly newsletter, is a free tool in supporting the process - whether you are flirting with, establishing or sustaining a perfect-for-you practice at home. Sign up for the newsletter and learn more about her private yoga offerings at www.youandtheyogamat.com.

By Kate Connell, community contributor

In a time when millions are doing yoga, there still is an absence of information about constructing a home yoga practice.

A healing art that once was centered on an individual yoga practice has been modernized into a social and group activity. But when group classes stop serving their purpose, your intentions pull you on your mat at home or you search for a supplement to your group classes.

Here are some ABCs to serve as a foundation for developing your unique at-home yoga practice:

Area

One of the biggest hurdles in cultivating a home practice is creating the space where we can retreat, escape and center. Clearly defining your yoga space physically and mentally is one of the most essential pieces to maintaining a beneficial practice. Assess your options and pick a location that has the crucial components for you. For most of us, we need a space that has one or more of the following - Quiet relative to the rest of the home; organized in order for our mind not to wander to mess, chaos, or disorder; and equipped with props, walls, windows or a closing door.

Balance

Many find themselves creatively making up a sequence, ad-libbing a past class they took or working on the postures they naturally excel at and gravitate toward. All of these tendencies create imbalance in the practice and, as a result, in the body and mind. Work with a symmetrical sequence that has been passed down from a lineage, with a yoga teacher who can design a practice that suits your individual needs. If you are a yoga educator yourself, design an at-home practice that cultivates physical symmetry while working through your limitations as well as a powerful pranayama and meditation practice.

Consistency

In this example, consistency means two specific things - arriving to the mat each and every time you've committed with an intention to grow and deepen your at-home yoga practice and to move through a moving meditation that is specific, evolving and modifying, but consistent similar.

Fitting in time for yourself can read as awfully indulgent to others and more commonly gets neglected in order to meet the needs of others. Generally speaking, this is simply unacceptable. Finding regularity in your yoga practice requires carving out the time like you would for other commitments. It demands follow through, discipline and, at times, even compassion.

Creating an at-home yoga practice is a deepening of the practice of yoga itself. Finding room for growth, balance, and the dedication to follow through on your self-improvement can be challenging and also hugely rewarding.