"Which hot yoga poses can I practice at home?"
I love enthusiastic Riverflow hot yoga students who ask me, "Which hot yoga poses can I do at home?"
The answer: all of them - as long as you never move a muscle.
Once you have a steady, 3-times-a week hot yoga practice, you can improve all 26 of your hot yoga poses by rehearsing them in your mind.
That's right - sit back and be lazy. (Repeat after me: Lazy is good; lazy is good; lazy is gooooooood!)
Only it's not so lazy; it takes commitment, focus, and giving up the guilt about "doing nothing." Get ready for your Hot Yoga Mental Rehearsal.
Mental rehearsal isn't a New-Age, touchy/feely thing; it's science. Countless experiments like the one above, usually done with athletes, prove that the results can be exactly the same when you exercise your mind.
Can you pretend your hot yoga practice into perfection?
How is this possible? Your mind knows no difference between what you imagine, and what is actually happening. Either way you are creating neural pathways that will support your hot yoga pracitce.
This mental rehearsal of your hot yoga practice is not a meditation, or a visualization.
How do you do a mental rehearsal of a hot yoga practice?
Relax, see and feel yourself doing the hot yoga poses, and here's they key: you don't take the point of view of observing yourself, but instead imagining how you feel in the moment of performing an asana, and feeling the exhilaration of a perfect Standing Bow Pulling pose.
Do you ever have to come to hot yoga class if it's all in your mind?
We humans are action creatures - we have these bodies and we love to move them. It just feels so good to have a fine-tuned machine with sculpted muscles and endurance to go the distance. Think of your hot yoga classes as the proving ground of your mental practice; you experience the pleasure of hot yoga with your physical body, while mental rehearsal sets you up to do just that.
Combine the two - mental rehearsal and physical activity - and you have the best of the mind/body connection. Now, close your eyes, and get Camel pose to feel good for a change!
Like we say in Savasana, lying still, relaxing and focusing on what feels good is the most powerful thing you can do.
Rhonda Uretzky, E-RYT
Reader Comments (8)
I love love love the way camel pose feels. I think it's because it's one of the most intense of the series... So in theory is one way to "perfect" my practice just simply visualize as it while I'm doing things like chewing gum or driving.
Glad you love Camel - you are a rare bird, Camel is a heart challenge. Mental rehearsal is more than visualizing; it's a full on mental process of going through the pose in your mind so you can experience yourself doing it perfectly; how it would look AND feel. So perhaps you should pull over first - closing your eyes is often needed for a mental rehearsal!
I use visualization to help me relax and fall asleep. Instead of an "open eyed meditation" it becomes my "closed eyed meditation" allowing me to focus on one thing at a time and slow my breathing down. I also like to try and start at a different point in the series each night and the process is helping me memorize the Sanskrit names of the poses.
Visualization is cool but notice that this is Mental Rehearsal and most likely it will not make you fall asleep because you are highly focused on the nuances of the poses and feeling yourself in the pose - physically and emotionally. That takes some staying awake!
Visualize the actual process of doing the poses, living into the 90-minute practice, but only without moving...that would be incredibly challenging for me. Truly giving in, focusing, meditating--I question whether this would be more challenging than being in an actual class. No doubt in my mind this would do wonders for my actual hot yoga practice.
I will try this with my scripting practice. Great idea!
I have found visualizing to be the most successful method for memorizing the Hot 26 script, too (while verbalizing orally), along with the other core focus of this post- "commitment" to practice.
Great way to use that long drive Amy; speaking the poses. I would not recommend a mental rehearsal or visualizing while driving! You can record your own voice saying the poses and play that while driving... Again not to visualize just to listen and let it in to your subconscious mund