8 Reasons to Take Private Yoga Lessons!

Why take a private yoga lesson? 

My last post was about the amazing health benefits of a regular yoga practice (see here for more details). Hopefully it will have gone some way in persuading you that yoga is good for you!

“OK,” you might think, “I’d love to give it a go, but I’m not flexible enough!”

Or: “I’ve never done it before; I’m worried I won’t be able to follow the class properly!”

These are the two most frequently given reasons I’ve heard from people who are reluctant to join my group yoga classes. (I teach vinyasa flow on Saturdays and hatha flow for beginners on Sundays. See my Facebook page YogaFlowWithJo for more information.)

In answer to the first – I say that you go to yoga to become more flexible, you don’t have to be already flexible to start going to yoga.

And in answer to the second – I get it. I understand. No one wants to be the newbie in the class, the one that doesn’t know what downward facing dog is. You think it’s embarrassing. HOWEVER, I’d like to reassure you that no one is looking at you or judging you in a beginner’s class. EVERYONE has been the newbie at some point or other.

Even for experienced yogis, we still get that feeling sometimes, when we go to a new class with a new teacher and we don’t know what’s coming or don’t immediately understand the alignment cues, and we’re looking around to other people in the class thinking, “Say what? What does she mean by that??”

But if you’re still worried, the best thing to do is to go for a private yoga lesson. These one-on-one lessons can build your confidence and teach you the basics of yoga alignment. As with any private training, the benefits go beyond the functional training. Here are 8 good reasons to take a private yoga class:

• A private lesson is less intimidating for beginners. It’s just you and the teacher. No one else. So if you feel self-conscious about not being able to touch your toes, or if you want to ask a gajillion questions, or if you think your arms are too skinny/too wobbly/too hairy or whatever (they’re not – but we all have weird issues with our own body parts), then a private lesson is a great way to work on your yoga skills before attending a group class.

• You get individual attention and personalised alignment cues. The teacher is there for YOU. The class is all about YOU. There are a million ways to describe a pose. And your body is different to my body. This means that when you move into a pose, you will need different cues depending on what your body is doing at the time. Your teacher will watch you move into the pose and verbally ‘adjust’ you by giving you personalised cues and instructions.

• You get more hands-on adjustments. Sometimes, giving verbal adjustments isn’t enough, especially for beginners. Maybe you haven’t developed that sense of body awareness yet. Your teacher might be instructing you to square your hips in Alanasana (High Lunge) and you might think that your hips ARE square! Until the teacher physically adjusts you and you realise that you needed to bring one hip forward and the other hip back.

• You can work towards a personal goal. Most yoga classes for beginners will be a balanced practice and may include a range of standing, sitting, balancing, strengthening and lengthening poses. For general health benefits, this approach is great! But maybe you particularly want to lose weight, or build upper body strength, or you’re a runner and you want to offset the tightness in your hamstrings with a yoga practice. It can be anything. Private lessons are all about you and your body, your goals.

• You can work safely with injuries. This is an extension of the ‘it’s all about you’ approach. You can still practice yoga with injuries and in many cases yoga will help with your rehabilitation. Take care to explain the nature of your injuries to your teacher well before the class so that she has time to do her homework. If she knows about your injuries beforehand, she can design a thoughtful class sequence accordingly.

• Practise whenever and wherever it suits your schedule. You might be super busy and the only time you can fit in a yoga session is at 8am on a Wednesday morning before your meetings start. Or maybe you prefer to practise in the evening at 8pm and wind down before getting ready for bed. Whatever your schedule is, a private yoga lesson fits in with your day, rather than the other way round.

• Take your practice to the next level. When you’re no longer a beginner, you might want to continue with private lessons as a way to keep challenging yourself. Once you have the basics down pat and you have a regular yoga practice, you can use the time in your private lessons to start practising the more challenging poses. Want to learn headstand? No problem! Want to fly into crow pose? Your teacher will guide you step by step into these poses safely and with self-compassion.

• Build your confidence towards a self-practice. I feel that good private yoga teachers will eventually teach themselves out of a job. Once you’ve learnt the fundamentals of alignment, the art of sequencing, the breakdown of each pose and its particular physical and mindful benefits, you could start to play around with creating your own yoga practice. It may take years, or it may take months – it all depends on what you are looking for.

Of course, these are all just physical and practical benefits of private yoga lessons and yoga is so much more than just a physical practice; it is a way to connect the mind with the body and the soul. But we’ll leave that topic for another day..