This article is designed for beginner, intermediate and experienced yoga practitioners alike, who are new to attending my yoga classes.
Or for those who would like a refresher on the fundamental concepts of yoga practice to deepen their training and improve their mental, physical, and energetic form and discipline in yoga.
In this article, you’ll learn the important basics of yoga practice to help support your self-growth, holistic wellness, and safety.
8 Practical And Safety Guidelines For Yoga Students
1. Notify Your Teacher Of Any Injuries, Illnesses, Disabilities, Pregnancy And Any Other Physical/Mental/Emotional Conditions
Even though in most cases your yoga teacher will not be a certified medical health or mental health professional, it’s still really important to notify your yoga instructor of any illnesses, conditions or disabilities that could affect your yoga asana practice—whether these are temporary, permanent, emotional, mental or physical.
This helps your yoga teacher to tailor your yoga class to support your healing and recovery, minimise the aggravation of any conditions, or simply to keep you safe.
Each posture or yogic practice has contraindications and things to be aware of—which your yoga instructor should know, whilst you might not.
For example, if you have high blood pressure, you’re going to want to avoid yoga postures that involve inversions. If you’re experiencing dizziness or vertigo, then it’s best to avoid inversions and balancing postures.
If you’re experiencing PTSD, you might feel more comfortable with your eyes open than closed, and if you’re pregnant there are a variety of considerations to take into account.
Whatever you’re experiencing—no matter how big or small—don’t be shy or reserved in letting your yoga teacher know, because it helps to keep you safe, healthy, and happy.
Furthermore, your yoga teacher might have some great yoga and holistic wellness tips to help improve your condition, as opposed to inflaming it.
2. Notice The Difference Between Dull Muscle Discomfort Versus Sharp Located Pain
Sometimes yoga can feel somewhat uncomfortable, especially when you’re doing new poses, or perhaps aspiring to delve a little bit deeper into a yoga asana (yoga posture) than you usually would.
However, yoga should not ever be overly painful. Not only does the sensation of pain make meditation harder—it can also be a warning signal.
It is important to learn the difference between safe discomfort due to reasonably expanding your boundaries, compared to pain which is your body’s warning sign that something is wrong—or that you’re inching your way closer to an injury.
Often when injuries occur, it’s not an immediate process, and it has in fact been a build-up of poor form or technique over a period of time. In these cases, the body often gives warning signals that are ignored.
For this reason, it’s important to learn the difference between ‘reasonable discomfort’ and ‘warning sign pain’.
As a general rule, any sharp and located pain (that is sometimes short, shooting or pinching), especially in the joints, ligaments (tissue that connects bone to bone), or tendons (tissue that connects the muscle to the bone) should be avoided.
Whereas discomfort spread over the larger surface area of a muscle, that feels more dull in nature, is often simply your muscle fibres stretching, lengthening, expanding, and strengthening.
3. Use Variations And Modifications Where Necessary
Variations and modifications are your friends. They do not make you ‘weak’, ‘less than capable’, ‘not as good’ or reduce the quality of your yoga practice—in fact, quite the opposite.
Well-used modifications and variations can help you to improve, deepen, and expand upon your yoga practice.
It’s much better to nail a variation or modification properly, safely, and with good form, than to over-extend your capacity in a way that isn’t safe, or doesn’t benefit your inner yoga and meditation.
Furthermore, it requires more self-awareness, courage, and vulnerability to understand your strengths, challenges, and areas for improvement, than it does to ignore your boundaries and over-strive due to the demands of the ego.
4. Use Yoga Props And Equipment
Yoga props are your friends. Much like variations and modifications, using props for your yoga practice does not make you ‘weak’, ‘less than capable’, ‘not as good’ or reduce the quality of your yoga practice—again, quite the opposite.
Well-used yoga props and equipment can help you to improve, deepen, and expand upon your yoga practice.
For example, using a yoga strap can help you to deepen your yoga asana (yoga posture) over time with good form, instead of perhaps uncomfortably over-striving or having poor form and leading yourself towards an injury.
Yoga blocks can also contribute to better form, and can allow you to ‘rest’ within your yoga pose.
Being able to ‘rest’ and breathe properly within a yoga pose allows your muscles to relax so that you can move deeper into the posture.
Yoga bricks allow you to deepen and extend your practice in a safe way over time.
If you’d like to learn more about the best yoga props to use in your yoga classes to improve your practice, read my article here.
5. Find Your ‘Edge’ And Then Go To 90% Of Your Fullest Expression
It can be tempting to over-strive in yoga, which can actually hinder your practice in numerous ways. The general tendency is to push yourself to your limits in yoga asanas (yoga poses).
Not just physically, but also to the point of not being able to breathe with calm and ease—and to the point where you are mentally in distress and can’t meditate either.
My recommendation is to find your ‘edge’. To find your edge just go into your fullest and deepest expression of a yoga pose, where you are teetering on the edge of compromising your form and breath.
You might notice that you’re beginning to sacrifice your breath control and that your body is being pushed towards (or even beyond) its limits. Once you have found this point in the yoga pose, pull back slightly—so that your final expression in the posture is 90% of your ‘fullest capacity’.
Notice the difference in how it feels to embody these two different ‘final postures’. In one, there is little peace, and you might even risk injury, whilst in the other, there is space for inner peace, meditation, and physical growth.
This sweet spot, where you are reasonably challenged without compromising form or breath is your asana.
At 90% of your fullest expression, you can maintain good form in your posture and hold a calm, deep, slow, and steady flow of breath whilst still expanding and building upon your strength and flexibility in the pose.
The ideal yoga pose is steady, stable, and comfortable. “Sthira sukham asanam”—Patanjali Yoga Sutras, Verse 2, Chapter 46 (2:46).
When practising your yoga asana at 90% of your capacity you are still continually expanding and deepening your practice, but you’re able to maintain steadiness, stability, and comfort in body, mind, and breath—which is the proper form of the ‘ideal’ yoga posture.
Not only that but if you’re in unnecessary discomfort (or even pain) in your yoga poses because you’re over-striving, your muscles will be contracting as opposed to relaxing and stretching—which prevents you from reaching your deepest and best expression of the pose.
6. Practice With Your Eyes Closed Or Utilize Your Drishti
My general recommendation is to practice yoga with your eyes closed whenever it is possible and safe to do so.
Yoga is a moving meditation, and with that in mind—what you can see and the sensory input coming into your consciousness through your eyes is important.
Your surroundings can easily distract you, create a stream of thoughts, or pull you out of your moving meditation.
Drishti means ‘focused gaze’ in Sanskrit, and relates to the 8 limbs of yoga. The 5th limb of yoga is pratyahara, which translates to ‘sense withdrawal’ and the 6th limb of yoga is dharana, which translates to concentration—both of which can aid and lead to meditation and awakening.
Each yoga asana (yoga posture) has a dedicated focal point for your vision, which results in drishti—a focused gaze.
Practising yoga with your eyes closed helps to quieten any thoughts in relation to the outside world, and helps to draw your awareness inwards to your inner world. It also engages the 5th limb of yoga—sense withdrawal or pratyahara.
However, practising with your eyes closed isn’t always possible. If you’re new to a class or to a yoga asana, then you’ll want to get familiar and comfortable with the teacher or the pose before attempting to practice with your eyes closed.
It is also not recommended to practice with your eyes closed when you’re doing balancing poses, inversions, or are feeling dizzy.
If you’re unable to practice with your eyes closed for whatever reason, then remember to fix your eyes on the dedicated focal point for the particular yoga asana (yoga pose) so that you can concentrate and activate your drishti.
You can also activate drishti even when you have your eyes closed too, by concentrating your ‘inner gaze’ on the same dedicated focal point for the asana.
7. Adjust Your Practice Accordingly; Menstruation, Pregnancy, Lactation, Menopause, and Low (Or High) Energy Levels
Your yoga practice is not, and should not be, fixed, stagnant or unchangeable.
Your yoga practice is fluid, adjustable, intentional, and tailored.
It’s important to be conscious of your current mental, emotional, and physical condition and tailor your yoga practice to your current state and energy.
It’s an advanced practice of self-awareness and self-love to listen to your body and how you feel—and to treat yourself appropriately according to your inner and outer state.
For example, at certain times during your menstrual cycle, you will feel more energetic and strong. Whereas at other times in your menstrual cycle, you might experience less energy and increased tiredness.
During the postnatal phase, your needs during your yoga practice will be very different than during pregnancy or menopause. It is normal and key to adjust your yoga practice in response to your holistic wellness.
If you’re feeling exhausted, perhaps opt for restorative yoga or yin yoga, and if you’re feeling really energetic, then perhaps try vinyasa yoga or ashtanga yoga instead.
Yoga practice also encompasses a lot more than simply asana practice, so maybe you prefer to focus on pranayama, meditation, mantra, ritual, or spiritual study when you have low energy.
8. Wear Comfortable And Flexible Clothing
It can be tempting to hop onto the latest yoga fashion trends, but it is most important that you can effortlessly move and breathe.
Irrespective of what you choose to wear to your yoga class, it should best support your asana and pranayama practice. Some practitioners prefer loose, thin and airy yoga clothing, whilst others prefer more figure-hugging sportswear-type clothing.
Choose an outfit that doesn’t take up any mental space. Ensure that you’re not self-conscious, that you can easily move, and that you can comfortably breathe deeply so that your moving meditation is supported as a priority.
If you want to learn more about how to choose the ideal yoga outfit, check out my article here.
15 Mindset, Yoga Philosophy And Pranayama (Breathwork And Energetic Work) Guidelines For Yoga Students
1. Yoga Is A Moving Meditation
In the West, yoga is often mistakenly identified solely with the physical poses—asanas—and as a form of exercise or exclusively as a physical practice.
The asana (posture) aspect of yoga which is commonly taught in yoga studios around the world certainly can be used as a form of exercise, and has a variety of benefits for the body and physical health.
A clinical study by the International Journal of Yoga found that yoga not only boosts muscular strength and enhances physical flexibility, but also improves respiratory and cardiovascular function too.¹
But yoga is actually a spiritual philosophy from South Asia comprised of various beliefs, principles, and traditions, along with mental, physical, and spiritual practices.
Yoga asana practice, as is commonly taught in yoga studios, is a moving meditation. Designed to balance energies, still the mind, and raise the practitioner’s level of consciousness —also known as enlightenment or samadhi in Sanskrit.
Yoga is a combination of tools and techniques designed to balance and work on the practitioner’s mind, physical body, and energetic body to prepare them for meditation, dhyana in Sanskrit, and subsequent samadhi (or awakening).
With this in mind, yoga must be intentionally treated and honoured as a holistic spiritual practice that encompasses a range of techniques beyond simply physical postures.
Yoga can incorporate breathwork, energetic work (pranayama), rituals, mantras, spiritual philosophy, mindset coaching, sacred traditions, deity worship, sound healing, and much more.
2. Pranayama (Breathwork And Energetic Work) Are Central To Yoga
Classical hatha yoga practice is built upon Patanjali’s 8 limbs of yoga (ashtanga yoga).
Pranayama (breathwork and energetic work) is one of these 8 limbs, and as such is central to practising yoga effectively.
The breath—when used correctly—is a vessel to deeper levels of consciousness, and an enhanced yoga practice.
There are a variety of breath principles that we can utilize in our yoga practice, and these can vary between different yoga styles, but some of the basic fundamentals to master are:
- Ensuring that the breath is long, steady, calm, rhythmic and deep
- Coinciding each movement with the inhalation or exhalation of the breath
- Only intentionally holding the breath as part of a pranayama technique
- Using the breath as a concentration tool for meditation during your asana movement
If you’d like to learn more about the most important rules of breathwork for yoga practitioners, read my article here.
And if you’d like to learn more about what your breath can tell you about your yoga practice, then read my article here.
3. Strength And Flexibility Are A Benefit Of Yoga, Not Its Purpose
In an attempt to avoid the cultural appropriation of yoga, it’s important to understand what yoga is, and what yoga isn’t.
Yoga asana practice is great for physical health, and can help to build muscle strength, improve physical flexibility, and enhance cardiovascular and respiratory function—but they are benefits of the moving meditation, not its sole purpose.
The main purpose of yoga is to achieve meditation leading to spiritual awakening, or enlightenment (samadhi).
Any other aims in yoga, such as strengthening the body, cleansing the chakras and energy channels, balancing the energetic body, building mindfulness and self-awareness, and calming the mind are all developed for the sole purpose of achieving meditation that opens deeper levels of consciousness leading to samadhi (enlightenment).
4. Your Breath Can Help You To Access Deeper Levels Of Awakening
Your breath can help to deepen your yoga practice, or it can signpost to areas that need to be improved and challenges in your yoga practice.
Not only can your breath facilitate your moving meditation, but it can also help to relax and release your muscles—allowing your muscles to lengthen so you can sink into a deeper expression of each yoga pose.
When you are breathing freely—as opposed to holding your breath or engaging in short, shallow, irregular breathing—you are signalling to your body that you are safe and that it can relax.
A relaxed body (and breath) results in flexible, supple muscles that easily expand and stretch.
If you’re ready to learn more about how you can use your breath to improve your yoga practice, then be sure to read my article on what your breath can tell you about your yoga practice.
5. Be Patient And Practice
It’s important to be patient and realistic with your yoga practice. Practice to your capacity, and be gentle with yourself—try not to push, hurry, and rush with your practice.
Over-striving can not only cause you injury but can hinder your yoga progress emotionally, mentally, and physically.
As with most things, progress happens over time on your yoga journey—so be patient. You will get where you want ‘to go’ if you simply practice with consistency—just enjoy the journey and the present moment (which is also a lesson of yoga).
If you’re over-striving physically you can cause yourself injury, or prevent your body from relaxing and lengthening due to stress.
And if you’re pushing yourself too hard this can cause emotional frustration and mental tension, which also hinders your meditation practice.
Focus on making small, realistic, consistent progress over a long period of time through regular practice. Don’t expect to always ‘get it’ immediately or to see results instantly.
Be reserved in writing yogic techniques off as ‘too hard’ or that you ‘can’t do it’. Most of the techniques develop with patience and practice—especially pranayama techniques, more intricate asanas, and meditation.
Remember that your yoga practice is not simply an outward journey in relation to your physical body, but it’s also an inward journey for your mind and emotions.
Sometimes you might find that you don’t understand a yogic philosophy or can’t do a yogic technique and therefore feel compelled to reject it. My advice is to be reserved with the rejection of philosophies and techniques.
If it doesn’t immediately resonate, my experience is that it’s better to ‘temporarily’ set aside the philosophy or practice and come back to it when it feels right, or it does resonate. As opposed to permanently rejecting it just because it doesn’t resonate right now.
This allows you to come back to things and explore with inquisitive playfulness and without restrictions.
6. Use Yogic Techniques To Help To Increase Your Concentration
Many people think they can’t do yoga or meditate because their ‘mind is too busy’, and they ‘can’t stop all their thoughts’.
The thing is, everyone has a busy mind and incessant thoughts—that’s the nature of the human mind and is exactly why we train our minds with yoga and meditation, not the reason that we don’t do yoga.
Traditional yogic techniques are designed to help you to focus the mind. And because they involve a deep level of concentration, they facilitate the foundation for your moving meditation.
One of the easiest techniques to start with is to use a breathing technique (pranayama) and focus on your breath throughout your yoga practice.
You’ll often find that when you lose your concentration on your breath and your focus wanders, your mind also starts wandering and your meditation ceases.
If you struggle with meditation or want to deepen your meditation practice, check out my article here on the unusual things that might be preventing you from meditating.
7. Create Serene Conditions
It’s important to support your yoga and meditation practice with the correct environment because that can be the difference between a comfortable practice that flows with ease, versus a disrupted practice that feels like a struggle and battle.
Certain conditions are conducive to allowing meditation to arise. Ensure that your room isn’t too hot or too cold. Try to limit noise, scents (or incense), music, and distractions unless you’re engaging in a sound meditation.
Many people like to practice yoga with music playing in the background, but I encourage silence during practice—especially for beginners—because music has the tendency to distract and pull you out of meditation, especially music with lyrics.
If you want to learn how to create the perfect home yoga studio, check out my article here.
8. Enjoy This Playful Form Of Self-Inquiry
Yoga is a spiritual philosophy and it is respectful to take the practice seriously, however, yoga is also a playful form of self-inquiry—so enjoy it with grace and ease.
It allows you to discover yourself on the mat with childlike curiosity, and it provides a method through which you can explore your physical, mental, energetic, and spiritual capacity.
There is a lightness and joy to practising and living yoga, which can provide some relief to more dogmatic, strict, outdated or oppressive approaches to spirituality.
9. Build Your Mind-Body Connection
A huge part of your yoga practice is about building self-awareness, increasing your level of consciousness, and honing your mind-body-energetic connection.
You can help to improve your mindfulness by building an awareness of sensations and subtle energy during your yoga practice. Closing your eyes can make the perception of sensations and subtle energy a bit easier.
You can also consciously enhance your mind-body connection by paying attention to your muscles, bones, and physical movements in conjunction with your breath.
Whatever you’re doing within your yoga practice, you should be doing it mindfully and with full awareness of the body and breath.
10. Assert Your Right To Self-Sovereignty — Prioritise Your Practice
It is important to listen to your yoga instructor, whilst being open to their guidance with open-mindedness and humility. However, your yoga instructor is simply a guide, and it is also equally important to find the balance of maintaining your self-governance and autonomy too.
You do not need anyone’s permission to adjust your own yoga practice or to do what feels intuitively right to you. Consciously build upon your intuition, empower your inner voice, and learn when your inner voice needs to be listened to and acted upon.
It is encouraged to move and breathe out of sync with your yoga instructor’s verbal direction if it means you’re following and prioritising your own natural rhythm.
Your yoga instructor’s class narration is simply to help guide you through the practice, but it is normal to often find yourself moving and breathing at different times to the instructor and other class participants—especially if you are truly prioritising your own moving meditation.
Don’t rush to keep yourself in ‘synchronicity’ with others, focus on your own natural rhythm.
You never need your yoga teacher’s permission to opt for the mountain pose (tadasana) or child’s pose (balasana) to restore your energy, in place of the pose that is being guided.
11. Become Your Own Teacher
One of the aims of your yoga practice is to eventually become your own teacher, we call this ‘self-practice’ or ‘home practice’.
Self-practice is when you are guiding yourself through your own yoga class without following another teacher’s sequence or cues.
Ultimately, you don’t want to be forever dependent on yoga teachers. You should be learning the philosophy, practices, traditions, and techniques and implementing them intuitively into your own daily life and building your own yoga practice.
This develops over time because there are multiple skills and things to learn in order to have the confidence, experience and knowledge to get to that point. However, being independent within your yoga practice should be a central aim.
12. Don’t Compare Your Yoga Practice
Ensure that you don’t compare your yoga practice to the yoga practice of others in a way that is detrimental to your self-esteem or self-development.
It’s vital to remember that every single yoga practitioner has a unique constitution—of mind, body and soul. Therefore, each person’s yoga practice should be individual and tailored to them.
It is impossible to compare your yoga practice as a like-for-like with someone else, because there are endless differences to take into account.
If you are prone to comparing yourself to others, it can help to practice with your eyes closed to draw your awareness inward.
13. Find The Balance Between Comfortable Ease And Progressive, Persistent Discipline
Yoga isn’t always easy, although the ‘perfect’ pose is steady, stable, and comfortable—it wouldn’t be realistic to say yoga is always a walk in the park.
Sometimes you might find resistance in your mind, fluctuating emotions, or discomfort in your body.
Whilst you shouldn’t over-strive in your yoga practice (to the point of pushing yourself into pain and a poor breathing pattern) you are required to encroach upon some of your comfort boundaries in order to be continually improving.
The trick here is to find a pleasant balance, between comfort and growth. Don’t force your yoga practice, but also don’t be lazy and constantly rest in your comfort zone either.
14. Practice On An Empty Stomach And Free From Stimulants
Like most physical exercise and movement training, it is best to practice yoga on an empty stomach. It is also not recommended to drink water during the practice itself due to subtle energy.
During your yoga asana, you are building the energy and element of fire within the body—so it is best to make sure you are amply hydrated and drink water before and after your yoga classes as opposed to during (apart from in cases of emergency).
Furthermore, you’ll want to avoid ingesting any stimulants because they’ll hinder your ability to meditate deeply.
It’s best to avoid stimulants such as caffeine, coffee, green tea, and foods high in sugar before your yoga practice to prevent a hyperactive mind during your moving meditation.
Saucha, one of the niyamas (observances) from the 8 limbs of yoga (ashtanga), is often translated as purity and cleanliness of the physical body, energetic body, mind, and home (or living environment).
A yogic diet (or sattvic diet) is designed to improve yoga practice and contains different guidelines such as avoiding stimulants.
15. Practice In Silence (Mauna)
Unless you are asking a question, participating in sound healing (such as chanting or mantra), or required to talk for any other urgent reason—my recommendation is to practice in silence (mauna).
This includes when you enter the class (online studio or physical shala) to when you leave the yoga studio.
Talking and sounds take you (and others) out of your inner silence and meditation. Get into the habit of treating the yoga space as sacred from the minute you step into your yoga shala to the minute you leave.
And try to maintain your sense of inner peace and stillness for as long as possible after your class by being gentle mannered, or staying silent (mauna) and introspective for as long as you can.
Conclusion
Each yoga teacher guides their classes differently, and different traditions and lineages also have different beliefs and practices.
These are general recommendations for my classes, but you’ll find my hatha yoga, vinyasa yoga, tantra yoga, yin yoga, prenatal yoga, and restorative yoga classes are all unique to their traditional lineage and as such—hold different practice norms that I guide when I am teaching within the classes.
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