How to Make Your Yoga Practice an Everyday Habit

We know how wonderful yoga is for us, so why is it so hard to make a daily yoga practice stick? If you’re struggling with this, check out our online course, Yoga Habit, and try out the tips below.

Habits are your best friend when it comes to sticking to a regular yoga practice because they make things effortless and easy. And when things are effortless, we’re much more likely to keep them up for the long haul. Like many other health behaviors, it takes practicing yoga consistently, rather than sporadically, to fully reap the benefits. On top of that, the more often you practice yoga, the more often you’ll feel those profound benefits and get to enjoy them.

 

Habits help to consistently keep something up because once a habit is formed, it’s likely that you do the behavior even when you’re low on motivation or energy, or when you have other things on your mind. Think about the habit of brushing your teeth – you probably brush your teeth even when you’re low on energy, even when you have a busy day, and even when you’re going through tough emotional dramas. Your habits happen no matter what. 

 

Forming a new habit requires the repetition of three key parts that are done often enough until it becomes automatic. These are the following:

 

1. THE CUE – this is what comes right before your yoga practice and “triggers” your brain to get on the mat and start your practice. A good cue for a daily practice could be something like after you finish your morning coffee or after you make the bed.

 

2. THE BEHAVIOR – this is obviously the yoga practice itself, but for the sake of establishing a habit, it’s important to downsize your practice into a mini-version that takes 1 minute or less to do. And that could even be as simple as one posture or a few rounds of deep breaths.

 

Research shows that simple, effortless behaviors are quicker to turn into habits than complex, effortful ones. That’s why it’s important to make sure you do just a 1-minute practice everyday at the very least. You can do more, of course, but never less. Then once the daily practice habit is established, you can build up and extend that practice to something bigger.

 

3. THE REWARD – having positive emotions during or right after the behavior is essential to wiring in a new habit. You can do this by making your practice inherently more enjoyable by using music, or doing postures that make you feel great in the moment, or by doing a short cheer or gesture right after your practice to celebrate the fact that you’ve kept up your daily goal.

 

A key thing in all of this is to start small. Starting small sets you up for success because it creates a solid foundation that you can build on with time.

 

Form a habit of getting on your mat everyday, regardless of whether that’s for 1 minute or for 90 minutes, and only then begin to grow that habit. When it comes to habits, slow and steady wins the race!

 

 

Want us to walk you through it? Join our 60-day course, Yoga Habit!