Re: Q about Hatha Yoga
I met a yoga teacher who initially taught herself from books and videos because she lived in a small country town with no yoga teacher. She started with a small group of women who decided she was the best and nominated her to become the teacher. So she started going to yoga retreats and eventually did her training.
I would recommend that you start with your book and then consider some type of yoga residential when you have the funds and feel competent enough to be in a class. Videos are good as another resource because you observe the instructor moving into and out of in the correct postures and there's a repetition factor in the verbalising of the posture that helps you internalise the procedure.
Be conscious of sequencing of postures too so that you counterpose and rest muscles you've been working with. This will also stop you from being all over the place - sitting, kneeling, prone, standing, prone, kneeling, inverted, sitting, lying- you get the idea. I can send you some hour long lesson plans for beginners if you like. You can leave out the Pranayama and work steadily through the exercises. I'd wait for a teacher for more dangerous inversion style postures (I'd remove these from the lesson plans before I send them to you). So, you'd probably be down to a 40 minute session, including Savasana/Corpse pose which you should do at the end of every vigorous session so that your central nervous system can recover.
The joy of a class is the group energy, the variety and the way it motivates you to keep going.
Namaste
"A dream is a question, not an answer."
(Therapist and dreamworker Strephon Kaplan
Williams)
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