Creating Space for a Home Yoga Practice

Bedroom Yoga Sanctuary

I practice yoga six days a week, mostly at home.  I go to class about once per week.  There is a space at the foot of the bed that is just big enough for my mat.   There is a cabinet for my props.  There is a blank patch of wall for kicking up to handstand.

My apartment is not big.  It’s four rooms (this is New York!), yet I have found it possible to carve out this space.

Just as I have set aside a space in my home for my practice, so have I carved out a place in my schedule.  I have a commitment to myself to show up on my mat every day, for at least twenty minutes.

That IS the practice!

The practice is not an elaborate series of postures.  It is not a checklist of shapes I have made with my body.  The practice is that act of getting my (sometimes recalcitrant, often weary, really quite busy and has-a-thousand-other-things-it-would-like-to-be-doing) a** onto that mat for a minimum of twenty minutes a day.  What happens after that is none of my business.  The practice seems to take on a life of its own.

I follow the same sequence of postures each time, which helps take the thinkwork out of it.  Frequently, though, I change up it midway.  I add a pose that seems right for the moment, or I skip one (or a whole bunch of them, if it’s that kind of day).  There have been days when I get on the mat, lie on my back, take a few twists and then lie in savasana.  Some days are like that.

But every day, I go up to my room and unroll my mat.  I light those candles and a stick of incense.  I sit and breathe for a few moments, then I begin to move.