When is the Best Time to Start Practicing Yoga?

When is the best time to begin practicing yoga?  Now.  It’s simple, really.  There's no wrong time to start practicing yoga.  The right time to start a yoga practice is when you desire it and feel like trying it out.  Maybe the best time to start practicing yoga is when you finish reading this blog.  It's never too soon or too late to do yoga.  There's not a right or a wrong time ... there's just time that we seek to fill time with worthwhile things.  I have found that when I make time in my life for yoga, the rest of my time in life (outside of yoga) feels much more calm, easy, and content.

I've been teaching a kids' yoga class for four weeks now.  For the first two weeks I had an eight-year old boy and his grandma join me.  They are a delight.  Last week my five-year-old nephew and three of my friend's kids ranging from three to eight years old joined us.  They totally got it.  My forty-one-year-old sister texted me that night to say: "I just had my first official yoga lesson with Nolan, the best instructor ever!  Cow, lion, child, giraffe, monkey, elephant, snake, and cobra!  He even walked around my body pushing certain areas down to the ground.  Hilarious!"

Today I added my four-year-old and two-year old nieces to the mix ... and goodness gracious, I learned that it's never too early to start practicing yoga.  Little Fiona (2 years old) followed every move I made and every breath I took.  She sat next to me on her mat, with her stalky little two-year-old body in seated pose breathing in and out deeply.  Her little body popped right up into downward facing dog!  She was all over it.  We learned tonight just how useful this pose is when her mom, after she successfully used the toilet (potty training success!) told her to bend over to wipe, and Fiona popped into her yoga pose and yelled, “Downward facing dog!”  Voila!  

In 2009 I traveled to China for two weeks during Thanksgiving and saw a multitude of very old people out in the grown-up exercise parks bending in ways that I couldn’t even get close to.  I was in awe with their flexibility, vigor, and health!  I told myself that whatever they’ve been doing all these years is what I wanted to do because I wanted a body like theirs’ at 80+ years.  Their exercise is Tai Chi (which I’ve tried only once).   I connected with yoga, and I’ve found that the benefits of yoga are comparable to what I was seeing in those Chinese elders.  In fact, at Bodhi Yoga I am incredibly inspired by a man who is in his eighties who practices yoga three times a week.  He began practicing when he was sixty-nine years old, and he swears that he is younger today than he was in his fifties.  He has had a healthier body for the past fifteen years than he did for many younger years leading up to this time.  And he has yoga to thank for it.  It really is never too late to begin.  

You may think you’re too old, that your body isn’t flexible enough, that you’re too big, or that it’s too hard for you.  Those are false thoughts that are blocking you from experiencing greater health and happiness.  Put them aside and repeat to yourself that you are the perfect age to begin yoga, that your body is exactly how it needs to be to begin a yoga practice, and that your ability is just right to begin to learn what yoga is all about … BECAUSE THESE THOUGHTS ARE TRUE IN YOGA-LAND.  Yoga isn’t about being flexible or achieving some phenomenal pose.  It’s a very simple act of stretching and moving slowly in a way that opens your body and mind over time to a more enlivened and awakened state.

So how old are you?  What is your body like?  … Oh perfect!  You are EXACTLY where you need to be to start practicing yoga.  Find a class for you (Beginner’s, Restorative (yum!), Kundalini, Bodhiflow, Vinyasa, Hatha, Hot Yoga … whatever suits YOUR fancy) and let the games begin!