How often have you been in a class where the teacher says something like, this is a yoga pose you should do every da, if you only have time to do one pose a day you should do this one. But each time you hear this, it’s about a different pose. Maybe a backbend, a forward bend, a child’s pose. So where are you supposed to start? Which is the best pose to chose if you don’t have a lot of time but want to try to do some yoga at home?
For me, when I first started doing yoga on my own at home I tried out lots of different things to see what worked best. Nowadays I would not be in so much of a hurry to find the right answer to to the question of which is the “best” pose because I feel that there isn’t just one. The right pose is always going to be the one that fits best with how you feel that day.
Yoga poses work on so many different levels - anatomical, energetic, emotional. It can be helpful to have an understanding of the functionality of that pose ie what it does to you, not just how to do it. On the other hand why not just trust your instinct and try out the pose that feels right for you. Admittedly you will need to develop some body-awareness first, the ability to notice and feel from the inside what you need, for this to be successfull, because yoga works from the inside-out.
So, for me that means not doing the same one pose every day. In fact it doesn’t even mean doing just one pose a day. It means making space everyday to do some sort of yoga practice. Sometimes I just need to chill out with a simple relaxing pose, other times i want to do a twist to release my back, or stretch the front of my body if I have a stomach ache, do something dynamic if I want to wake up a bit, something slow and relaxing if I’m feeling stressed, and on it goes. The options and variations are endless. So why would you only want to do one pose a day anyway?
