Five Reasons Not to Practice Yoga

People often come up with a variety of excuses not to do things. Here is a list of a few good reasons not to practice yoga:

1. You enjoy lacking energy and motivation.
Like so many others, your desire to watch Oprah re-runs outweighs your motivation to get up and practice yoga. Yoga can offer energy and motivation to start a healthy habit, and provide benefits off your mat. Releasing some tension that you might have built up frees up your energy to be put to more useful things.

2. Sweating is icky.
Not all types of yoga will break a sweat, but if you do find yourself taking a vinyasa or hot yoga class it’s probably going to cause your body to release toxins and nourish your skin from the inside. Sweating is useful in many ways, it is a natural way of regulating your body temperature, and creating that post yoga glow after a good class that wouldn’t be possible without a little sweat.

3. You like looking older then you actually are.
There are many ways that we can take care of ourselves to keep us looking younger and healthy. Releasing toxins when twisting, stretching, and sweating in a yoga class can do this. Also, think about how you feel after doing something good for yourself. Do you walk away a little taller and with a smile? When you feel beautiful and confident, you naturally look younger and more radiant.

4. You want to be stressed out.
If you’ve ever been stressed most people will tell you to breath, and this is the first thing you do in a yoga class. We open classes this way to reduce the level of stress and clear the busyness of our minds.  Now imagine over an hour of this.  Think of all the stress that could be released, not to mention the endorphins that exercise releases into your body.  But why would you want to be less stressed and happier?

5. You have a bad; back, knee, shoulder, hip, toe….etc.  And you like the pain.
You’ve hurt yourself in the past and now you don’t want to injure yourself any further …well I don’t blame you! When you’re in a yoga class let your instructor know what your injuries are and they will work with you to offer variations or modifications that could work better for your body.  I find that people who that listen to their body and do not pass their edge get the most satisfaction from Yoga.  Please, don’t compare yourself and your practice to others in class and take your time on your mat to appreciate what your mind and body can accomplish in the moment.  Creating a safe practice is what will increase your ability to keep on practicing and, who knows, maybe even stretch out that hurt (back, knee, shoulder, hip, toe, etc).

Want to practive Yoga? Already do, but want to increase your time on the mat? Check out our Yoga Seven Days a Week article for the New Bedford and the South Coast!