Why zoom yoga if you’re all zoomed out?
Spring has sprung and there may be a new zing your step! With renewal of life all around us, this the perfect time to dust off the aspirations planted in the dark of the New Year, consider and adjust them for the current, non-holiday rhythms of your life and enact a sustainable, effective plan for your health and well being in 2021. January 1st is a wonderful opportunity to dream. Late March, with Spring underway, is the perfect time to build habits to last. If your yoga practice is a habit you’d like to build, zoom yoga may be just thing. I know — ach with the zoom! What if, though, having a practice a week on zoom, possibly in addition to your home yoga practice or any studio practice you might enjoy could reset how you zoom work and party?
Zoom yoga is here to stay! A full 88% of people responding to our survey on how you want your yoga voted for all zoom or loving their zoom option. Some join us from other states and countries, so it’s their connection. Some live in places without a studio or gym, or just love their practice with us. Some love not going anywhere except the next room and saving the commute time. Some have grown used to the early morning practices and say there’s no way they could do them if they couldn’t join from home. The difference between live, small group, adapted community practices and videos is more than just “being there,” they say.
So why zoom yoga if you’re all zoomed out??? If zoom is how you work and talk to fam and have happy hour, why do yoga where you work?
You will reset your relationship to zoom. Yoga is all about rerouting our habit grooves, aka samskara. The best way to re-wire a habit is to create a new one. Zoom work/happy hour has a way of reinforcing a lot of sedentary patterns. Sitting, arms in front, maybe head a little forward seeking to connect with the screen. We start skipping the once an hour break we know makes us feel better because we’re “in the zone” or just can’t break away. We stop looking out the windows or simply away from the screen. Our worlds become a little smaller even though we’re connecting far and wide because our embodied habit range becomes more limited.
When you incorporate some yoga into your zoom routine, you’re more likely to remember to look away from the screen every half
hour and physically stand up every hour. When you participate in yoga, you hear another person breathing — slowly, steadily, while guiding you into the opposite of sedentary positions: bridge pose, Warriors, Cat-Dog, Locust and more. While many people still feel called to look at the screen from time to time — and it’s glorious when you’re learning or re-connecting to a pose, a teacher, a breath, comforting when you want to see you’re not alone — you’re also in so many other shapes, practicing breathing deeply, slowly, connectedly even while on zoom. Listening not only for cues, but for the breath, connecting with others without disconnecting from your internal awareness. Yoga at work, when it’s viable, is an incredibly sought after option. Now that work is home and home is everything, don’t leave your yoga out.
Still just can’t with the zoom? There are audio yoga options, like AudibleYoga.com . These have the advantages of never craning your neck to look under your arm in downdog to see what the teacher is doing. If you have enough experience with a few basic postures, this option can help you trust and believe your internal awareness, desires and directions.
Both of these options — zoom and audio yoga — help you incorporate your yoga habit into your everyday, into your home, into your groove. Studios can be supportive for many reasons, and not so much for others. Instead of making your yoga practice a departure from your day to day, why not try weaving it into your rhythms and rituals at home? You’ll practice in a different way — on and off the mat.
Turn your spare corner into your home yoga spot and create a new, healthy groove in your life.
