Since 2020, we all have—hopefully!—gotten better at navigating home workouts: how to do them, what to do exercise-wise, how to time our home workouts, how to set up the best home yoga space. From spring 2020 onwards, we rushed to buy and caused a fairly large back order of home gym equipment from dumbbells to resistance bands, and caused bike shops to completely sell out of bikes in many cities. So, we are now well-equipped for all of these at home workouts that we are evidently doing. But, what really is the best way to set up a great home yoga space? Do you just roll the mat out in the living room and then you are good to go? Not quite. Here is how to set up a distraction-free, easily used home yoga space that will suit your needs for relaxation, restoration, and reinvigoration! And, don’t just take my word for it—included here are tips from some of my own yoga students who have been diligently doing yoga at their own homes for months now!
1. Unless you are actually using your phone for streaming a yoga class, hide that thing!
There really is nothing more distracting that the “ding!” of a text message received during trikonasana (or any other pose for that matter). Will you be able to resist checking to see who and what that was? (Are you human?) Don’t allow technology to disrupt you—and it will, if you give it a chance. (In my in-person classes, I try hard to enforce the “no cell phones at your yoga mat” policy, which was something that I didn’t even need to have a couple years ago, but phone usage has become more than a little contagious—if the person right next to you is checking Snapchat, you are going to get the urge to do so too—and people are often nowadays not comfortably just waiting with themselves—a skill we could all get better at!) This was also the most recommended tip by my own yoga students this semester, who specifically said to hide the phone out of sight! (“Out of sight, out of mind” really does work in this case!)
Being on your mat sans phone is a chance to set up your practice in a way to allow you to calm your mind from electronic stimuli. As I was recently reminded by a restorative yoga book in the past year, we are human beings, not human doings. Allow yoga the full opportunity to fully recharge you from the stress of life, your screens, and everything else. If you need help “tricking yourself” into hiding your phone, just tell yourself you need to charge it, and then charge it out of sight while you do yoga.
That said, like most technological tools, you can just as easily use your phone to aid rather than hinder your yoga practice: your phone can actually be the way that you more easily mix up your home yoga routine with fresh content, scenery, and new moves and routines that you might otherwise never get the chance to experience and benefit from. Phones have actually allowed me as a yoga teacher to reach, teach, and help hundreds more yoga students than I otherwise might have been able to! The shift to online classes in 2020 jumpstarted the new Runners Love Yoga TV, where I publish new classes weekly, and where you can access classes directly from your laptop OR your phone through the new iOS or android apps. (Pro tip: sign up through the website so you can choose from the monthly or annual subscription, and then download the app to log in! The app has a ton of features which make it easy to streamline your phone usage for yoga to keep yourself free of distractions too.)
