Rejuvinating my Yoga practice. 5 posts

I am a qigong teacher, not a yoga practitioner. However, I can speak to "finding time and motivation". Almost everyone goes through a phase where one isn't motivated.

I have tried to completely quit my practice and started to notice that I was mentally, emotionally, physically worse off, even if I was getting other, even "better" exercise. I have "just done it" even if I didn't feel like it. I have slacked off and done only what felt right - sometimes by telling myself "I'm only going to do this for 5 or 10 or 15 minutes".

They all worked to get me back to being motivated and to appreciate my practice. As long as I commit to being fully present whenever I am actually practicing, even for 5 minutes, the practice becomes deeper and more meaningful.

Sorry, I feel like an evesdropper - I don't know the first thing about yoga or qigong (although I did a "power" yoga class once, and I was dripping with sweat and totally exhausted after the hour session - big surprise!) I love what you say about 5 minutes a day, though. I actually give my students that advice about practicing music. It's fun to see the reactions on their parents' faces. But I like that advice for three reasons. First, you kind of psych yourself out into doing more than five minutes. Most would agree that the hardest thing about a regular discipline, whether it's yoga or music, is getting started. It's getting that darn horn out of the case! Once I do that, five minutes often turns into 10, which turns into 20, 30, or even an hour or more. The second reason I like that advice is because it's advice anyone can follow. Barring being out of town, there is absolutely no excuse I can accept from my students as to why they couldn't find the equivalent time of two commercial breaks to put the horn to their face. The last reason I give that advice is because even when they practice only five minutes a day, they're thinking about the music long after they put their horn away. This is often where the real development happens. It's the same thing we were all told in school about not cramming for tests. A student will improve much faster on five minutes every day than on an hour and a half the day before the lesson. It works in school, it works in music, and I bet it works in yoga and qigong, too.

Yeah, what is qigong, by the way? Where's a good place to go online or offline for a qigone dummy?