So you want to get the most out of your yoga practice but you’re super busy? Well, you’re in the right place.
In this blog, we take a look at how you can make sure that you get the best results from your yoga practice, even when you are really strapped for time…
Is 20 Minutes A Day Of Yoga Enough?
20 minutes of yoga a day is more than enough to get great results if you have a consistent and well-rounded yoga practice.
A clinical journal by Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine noted that a regular yoga practice, and more specifically a yoga practice which includes frequent home practices, seemed to be indicative of better health in its participants in comparison to other yoga practitioners.¹
They found that in general, the frequency of yoga practice outside of a yoga class, as opposed to cumulative years of yoga practice or yoga class participation, was consistently a predictor of better holistic well-being.
And they also noted that frequency of practice seemed to be the most accurate indicator of better holistic health in comparison to how long a participant had practised yoga.
So, if you want to get the best results, you can buy yourself a yoga mat so that you have one on hand at home to practice on for at least 20 minutes per day—and be rest assured that 20 minutes a day is more than enough yoga to get fantastic results for your body, mind, and soul!
We can deduct from the current research, that if you’re strapped for time, practising 20 minutes of yoga a day, is often much more beneficial to your physical and mental health than going to a 60-minute yoga class twice a week.
We can also refer back to traditional yogic scriptures such as the 16th-century Patanjali Yoga Sutras. In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, he summarizes yoga, and notes in Chapter 1, Verse 14 (1:14) that the “fruits of yoga are acquired when the practice is continued and uninterrupted over extended amounts of time, with reverence and faith”.
In essence, he explains that the results of yoga come with persistence, consistency, and dedication over time.
How Long Do You Need To Do Yoga Before You See Results?
Surprisingly, it often doesn’t take long to see really good results from yoga. A variety of different clinical studies show that a daily short practice of yoga over a prolonged amount of time—such as 12 weeks—is more than enough time to start seeing tangible results in improved physical, mental, and emotional health.
Clinical research by Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine found that a 12-week hatha yoga program helped to improve flexibility, muscle strength, and cardiorespiratory endurance in its participants.²
Whilst another 12-week mindfulness meditation training helped to reduce stress whilst improving mental health and psychological well-being.³
If you want to learn more about the goal of doing yoga, check out my article on the best achievable yoga goals for beginners here.
How Do I Get The Best Results From Yoga?
Here are some quick tips on how to get the best results from your yoga practice so that you can up-level your physical, mental, and spiritual well-being!
Tips To Get The Best Results From Yoga
1. Build A Home Practice
Building a home practice is super important to get the best results—because this means you can jump on your mat at home even when you’re busy or can’t make it to a yoga class.
To build an effective home yoga practice you’ll need to get really comfortable and familiar with yoga.
Go to different yoga classes, try out different yoga styles, and also try different online classes to get a good feel for yoga. And then you can invest in a private yoga instructor to help you build some different routines that you can do at home.
2. Go To A Yoga Retreat
Going to a yoga retreat is a great way to immerse yourself in yoga which helps to fast-track your progress. You’ll have a teacher on hand to guide you through your yoga practice and to help with alignment and new practices.
You’ll come away feeling way more confident in your yogic practice, and you can implement what you learned into your home practice.
3. Try Different Yoga Styles
Trying different yoga styles really helps you to get the best results because you have a wider toolkit of yogic practices to cater for different moods, energy levels, and physical abilities.
Your yoga practice shouldn’t be stagnant, your yoga practice revolves around you—and you’re constantly changing.
Understanding how to practice different styles of yoga allows you to tailor your own home practice. For example, you can practice restorative yoga or yin yoga when you’re low energy, and vinyasa yoga when you are feeling full of dynamic energy.
4. Start Small And Build From There
Whilst it’s tempting to opt for big life transformations and changes—they’re notoriously hard to stick to and can result in yo-yoing.
I often find that the best results come from starting small, building grit, perseverance, and discipline, and then increasing in frequency and duration from there.
If you can only start with 5 minutes of yoga day—brilliant. Do that. And before you know it you’ll be doing 10 minutes, 15 minutes and then 20 minutes of yoga per day.
5. Create An Achievable Routine That You Can Stick To
Be realistic. Is it realistic with your daily life and schedule to do 60 minutes of yoga a day?
Be honest with yourself and stick to goals that you can actually achieve to help build your self-belief and self-esteem.
There is no use in creating lofty goals that get left to the wayside, it is much better to create smaller realistic goals that you can accomplish. Don’t underestimate the power of small changes that can be sustained over long periods of time.
6. Understand Your Aims And Create A Plan To Help You Achieve Your Goals
Understanding why you are practising yoga is going to help you reach your goals. For example, are you doing yoga for weight loss, strength training, mobility, flexibility, mental health benefits, or as part of your spiritual practice?
Most yoga classes help to build muscle, flexibility and strength through the use of body weight and yoga asana (yoga poses). And your yoga teacher will be able to help you create yoga classes and flows to reach many of your goals, but some health and fitness goals are best achieved with other forms of regular exercise.
For example, if you’re looking to extensively build muscle mass or engage in vigorous exercise for high aerobic activity you might be better off utilising resistance training or classic aerobic exercise to reach those fitness goals.
If you want to use your yoga practice to improve women’s wellness, read my article here to learn more about women-centred yoga.
Conclusion
When it comes to health and fitness, there is a tendency to feel that to get results, we have to do a lot of physical activity—and an all or nothing workout mentality ensues.
However, 20 minutes of daily yoga is more than reasonable for all people to fit into their daily schedule, and it is more than enough to get good results when practiced consistently over a long period of time.
If you can practice yoga for longer, and it fits easily into your daily routine, then great! But remember that it’s much more important to practice yoga regularly, than not at all.
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