In Shari’s post for tomorrow about creating a practice for improving balance, she will recommend some partner work. Of course, many of us have done partner work in class, but have you ever practiced yoga at home with a friend?
When I first started practicing yoga at home, I always practiced alone. My very image of “home practice” was so inextricably tied to the idea of being alone that it never occurred to me to practice with someone else. In fact, it wasn’t until I worked on Moving Toward Balance with Rodney Yee that I started practicing once a week with a friend at Rod’s urging. He wanted me to learn first hand about the benefits you can obtain from practicing with someone else. You see, he himself felt that he wouldn't have much of a home practice if it were not for the friends he practiced with.
So what did I learn from my experiments? It became pretty clear almost immediately that benefits of practicing with a friend included much more than simply being able to do partner yoga. Briefly, I learned through experience that practicing with a friend allows you to:
- inspire and support each other to practice regularly
- teach each other and learn from each other by taking turns leading the practice
- challenge each other (get each other out of ruts and/or encourage each other to practice poses you tend to avoid)
- observe and adjust each other
- talk to each other about yoga
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| Baxter Bell: One of My Favorite Yoga Friends |
