Anyone who’s taken a yoga class has probably heard the term “asana.” Asanas are the physical body positions or poses of yoga that form the foundation of a modern hatha… Read More→
Yoga for Beginners

Welcome Beginners!
When you’re brand new to yoga, it can feel intimidating and be difficult to know exactly where and how to get started. Our Yoga for Beginners guide was created specifically for you—to give you all the tips, guidelines, and recommendations you will need to start a successful yoga practice. To ensure your success, we highly recommend you read this entire page before attempting any yoga.

What Is Yoga?
Yoga is a vast collection of spiritual techniques and practices aimed at integrating mind, body, and spirit to achieve a state of enlightenment or oneness with the universe. What is normally thought of as “yoga” in the West is really Hatha Yoga, one of the many paths of yoga. The different paths of yoga emphasize different approaches and techniques but ultimately lead to the same goal of unification and enlightenment.
Hatha Yoga attains the union of mind-body-spirit through a practice of asanas (yoga postures), pranayama (yoga breathing), mudra (body gestures), and shatkarma (internal cleansing). These physical practices are used to purify the body and cultivate prana (life-force energy). Modern Hatha Yoga does not emphasize many of these esoteric practices and instead focuses more on the physical yoga postures.
Regardless of what your goals or intentions are for starting, just the yoga poses themselves is a fantastic form of mental and physical exercise.
Is Yoga Right for You?
If you have a medical condition or a recent injury, it can be challenging or dangerous to do certain types of yoga, specific poses, or breathing techniques. Usually, there are alternatives or modifications that can allow you to practice safely, and many common complaints have specific yoga therapy remedies. If you are recovering from an injury or are in poor health, we recommended consulting with a physician or other qualified health care professional before beginning yoga.
While you may feel some intensity in the belly of your muscles while in a yoga pose, you should never feel pain, especially in the joints. A sharp or intense pain is your body’s signal to tell you to stop, back off, and take it easy.
What Is the Best Yoga for Beginners?
If you are out of shape or extremely inflexible, we recommend you begin with a gentle practice until you have built up the strength and flexibility for more challenging sequences. If you are a relatively fit and flexible person, you should be able to jump right into a regular hatha yoga class. Once you are familiar with the basic postures, you can explore a vinyasa or flow class. We recommend you avoid Ashtanga, Bikram, or hot yoga until you have built up some physical strength and endurance. It is always best to error on the side of caution and safety and approach yoga slowly and carefully. The best way to know if yoga is for you is to give it a try!

How to Practice Yoga
Yoga is typically performed in bare feet on a sticky yoga mat with optional yoga props. The yoga movements and poses require clothes that can stretch and move freely with your body. You can purchase clothing specifically designed for yoga practice, but you can probably put together a comfortable outfit from your existing wardrobe to get started.
Yoga classes may use additional props, the most common being straps, blocks, blankets, and bolsters. You don’t need to purchase these right away as you can easily substitute these items with scarves or neckties, a stack of books, and pillows. If you take classes at a yoga studio, they will provide everything that you need.
Your First Yoga Practice
We recommend that you start with a short and straightforward yoga session and slowly build up from there. Once you feel comfortable with a few basic beginner yoga postures, you can incorporate them into a sequence and continue to add more challenging poses. Make sure you learn and follow the essential components of a yoga practice: breathing, meditation, intention, asanas, and relaxation.
How Often Should I Do Yoga?
If you can practice yoga 3 or more times per week, you will see significant improvements in your flexibility, range of motion, strength, balance, inner peace, and overall well being. Ideally, we recommend shorter and more frequent sessions, 20-45 minutes long, and for a total of 3-4 hours spread over several days. Practicing yoga less than this amount will still be beneficial, but you will see smaller improvements over a longer period of time. Like most things, the more time you can dedicate towards it, the more benefits you will receive.

The Benefits of Practicing Yoga
The benefits of yoga are almost endless! Practicing yoga helps build healthy virtues and good values, such as discipline, honesty, devotion, self-inquiry, mindfulness, and non-attachment. Yoga empowers you to make conscious choices toward living a more healthy and fulfilling life. Yoga also helps you:
- Keep your mind healthy and strong
- Reduce stress and promote relaxation
- Get a better night’s sleep
- Boost your immune system
- Help heal common aches like back pain
- Increase happiness and well being and reduce depression
- Lose weight and change your body shape
- Improve and maintain the health of muscles, joints, and organs
- Prevent conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, and auto-immune disorders
- Improve flexibility, strength, stamina, mobility, range of motion, and balance
How to Improve After Starting
Patience, commitment, repetition, and consistency are the keys to developing and progressing in the practice of yoga. After you’ve found a style, teacher, and yoga studio that works for you, try these tips:
- Commit to a regular schedule of yoga classes or home practice
- Increase the length of your practice and the number of days per week that you practice
- Attend yoga workshops that focus on specific aspects of yoga in more detail
- Journal the effects a consistent yoga practice has on your body, mind, and heart
- Read and study to learn more about yoga
- Find sources of inspiration
- Make yoga friends and get involved in a community of yogis
- Adopt a yogic lifestyle
Beginning Yoga Articles
Check out the below list of articles to further instruct and prepare you for getting started with yoga.
The Meaning and Use of Common Yoga Symbols
Yoga and meditation are rich in mystical symbolism. Yet modern yoga has both commercialized and overlooked many of the deeper meanings of these ancient sacred symbols. Many practitioners use symbols as… Read More→
The 8 Best Yoga Books for Beginners
An essential first step to getting started with a yoga practice is to find a good book to teach you the basics. The best yoga books for beginners should include… Read More→
7 Simple Steps to Start a Home Yoga Practice
Starting a home practice can be a great way to maintain and even deepen your yoga practice. It’s also a great option if you struggle to fit classes in to… Read More→
The Importance of a Daily Yoga Practice
My youngest daughter is fond of saying: “If you want to be a runner, you have to run; and if you want to be a weightlifter, you have to lift… Read More→
Bedtime Yoga for Beginners: How to Start
A good night’s sleep is crucial for your health, productivity, and overall well-being. Did you know that bedtime yoga can help you get a great night’s sleep and boost your… Read More→
Why Practice Yoga at Home?
Home yoga practice: we all know we should be doing it, but why bother, when we could just attend a class anyway? Taking classes at the local studio often feels… Read More→
18 Excellent Yoga Tips for Beginners
Starting yoga can seem like a daunting task, and the challenges that face beginners can be overwhelming. How do you begin an exercise practice when you’re out of shape and… Read More→
The Best Free Morning Yoga Videos for Beginners
Early morning is considered one of the best times to practice yoga, even for beginner students. Morning yoga routines are designed to gently stretch your body and make you feel… Read More→
Morning Yoga for Beginners: How to Start
Yoga is a great way to start your day. Whether you are a morning person or not, the practice of yoga can make your day a success. You will start… Read More→
How to Choose the Perfect Yoga Block
Yoga props were popularized by the late B.K.S. Iyengar as tools to support the body to allow a deeper expression of a yoga pose’s alignment. A yoga block or yoga… Read More→
The 18 Best Yoga Poses for Beginners
If you are new to yoga, you might feel overwhelmed with how to safely and adequately perform all of the yoga poses. We have over 120 different yoga exercises listed… Read More→
Hot Yoga: Definition, Benefits, Cautions and Tips for Newbies
More and more people are practicing hot yoga because of the intense workout it provides as well as the many benefits it offers. Hot yoga can give your muscles, lungs,… Read More→
14 Fantastic Free Yoga Videos for Beginners
Most beginners will want to try out some yoga moves before joining a group class to get a better understanding of what is involved in yoga and to be prepared… Read More→
24 Common Yoga Mistakes and How to Fix Them
There’s a lot that goes on in a yoga class—concentration, breathing, bending, twisting, and inverting—it requires complete engagement of the mind, body, and heart. For beginners and experienced yogis alike,… Read More→
Yoga Styles: One Word Definitions
More than a century has passed since Swami Vivekananda introduced yoga philosophy at the Chicago World’s Fair. But the asana-centric yoga we practice in the West today is a relatively… Read More→
7 Tips For Minding Your Yoga Manners
Is my mat welcome in class? It’s a question each of us might ask, whether we’re unrolling our yoga mats for the first time or the thousandth. Yoga is, after… Read More→
8 Ways To Prevent Yoga Injuries
Several years ago, New York Times reporter William Broad started a firestorm of words by painting yoga as a body-wrecking fitness fad. The response from the yoga community was passionate and… Read More→
Breathing in Asana
Our natural tendency is to hold the breath or use stress induced breathing (short and shallow) while holding a posture, especially in a challenging pose. This creates stress and tension… Read More→
Practicing Yoga with Common Injuries
We often bring injuries with us into our yoga practice – both from pushing ourselves too hard in yoga and from overworking our bodies in other exercise or daily activities…. Read More→
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