Yoga is a way of inculcating “a healthy mind in a healthy body”. It promotes the balanced development of overall mental, physical and spiritual wellbeing. Practicing yoga recharges the body and facilitates self-healing, reduces stress and tension, and enhances your personal power within. Apart from this, yoga bestows you with a feeling of rejuvenation and makes you feel energized for the tiring day ahead.
The last few years have seen an upsurge in the number of people starting yoga. Due to its large-scale benefits, doctors and medical professionals recommend daily practice of yoga. But who really has time for this? Even if you only do it from time to time it will have an astonishing effect on both mind and body.
How to Make Time for Yoga?
The benefits of yoga are widespread making it ALWAYS worth your time. However, “I do not have enough time” is a familiar excuse that is commonly made by all of us. Here are a few tips that might be of help to fit yoga into your busy schedule every day.
1. Break Free of Conventions
Conventional ways of doing yoga can become quite boring after a certain point in time. For example, performing a yoga pose barefoot on a cold winter morning is nothing less of a torture. So, instead of looking for excuses to skip your morning yoga, wear pair socks and get right to it. Once you get into the flow, you will automatically end up doing all the vital poses in your regime. In most cases, there is no compulsion when it comes to following the conventional ways of doing yoga. Breaking free from preconceived rules and notions is a great way to find time for yoga every day.
2. Switch to “Child’s Pose”
When you cannot bring yourself to roll out your mat and do a full yoga flow, switch to “child’s pose” and flunk down in your bed for a few breaths. This simple pose helps you to stretch your quads, lower back, groin, and hips. It is also shown that people tend to end up doing a lot more of yoga as soon as they begin with this. They tend to end up doing several extra poses. This, in fact, makes yoga more of a self-motivated act, rather than a forced one.
3. Quit Hitting the Snooze Button
Quit hitting the snooze button every time your alarm rings in the morning. Instead of looking for those extra minutes of sleep, quickly slip in a few poses of yoga like twists, happy baby and stretching towards the ceiling above. You can also opt for a braced forward bend as you get down from the bed. What’s better? All you need for this posture is your own bed for support.
4. Be aware of your breath
Be aware of your breathing as often as you can. Since you do not stop breathing, it is the most natural form of yoga that you can practice through the day. It keeps you grounded in the present moment. Conscious breathing is a great way to remind yourself of the calm and peaceful sensation you experienced while meditating or performing a yoga pose at a certain point in time. Thus, you can stay connected to the feeling yoga or meditation gives you without actually doing it.
5. Yoga in the Shower
Try relaxing and stand in Mountain Pose with your back facing the shower rose. Squeeze the blades of your shoulders down and open your chest. Feel the water pouring down your body. You can then fold into a Forward Fold and face the water or allow the water to run over your spine. This lets the jets of water massage your back.
6. Yoga with Your Kids
As a parent, you can always align your own yoga practice sessions with that of your children. Though practicing yoga with your children might prove to be a bit frustrating at times, their gleeful attitude is bound to add on to the energy of your sessions and give you that extra boost you need. Check out our tips and tricks for yoga with kids as well as our favorite yoga poses here.
7. Switch to Practicing Yin-Yoga
Yin Yoga is a slow style of yoga with asanas or postures that are held for long periods of time. Beginners usually hold them for a time ranging from 45 seconds to about 2 minutes. For advanced practitioners, it might extend up to 10 minutes or more. The specialty of this form of yoga lies in its ability to bring the practitioner into a meditative state while doing yoga. While most of the other forms of meditation concentrate on the wellbeing of the mind, yin yoga extends to your physicality as well.
8. Make Yourself A Choice
As we become busier and busier, we tend to surround ourselves with too many choices when it comes to deciding ways in which we want to spend our free time. Remember, you can always make time for yoga. All you need is a sense of prioritization. So, instead of scrolling through social media, opt for sessions of peaceful yoga during your free time.
Yoga is more than a few extensive poses. It is not essentially something that needs to be practiced during separate hours allocated for it. Your mind can be trained at any time of the day; while you take your dog out for a walk, wash your dishes or even while you are in a conversation with your friend. Finding time for yoga is not a very difficult task if you know the right way to go about it.
Check out our yoga flows here – most of them only take 10 – 15 minutes.
