What are the main Yoga pose safety tips? What should teachers and students know about safety tips? There is so much that is good about establishing a routine Hatha Yoga practice. Yoga posture safety must be considered at all times. Any form of Yoga can be practiced at home alone, at the beach, in a park, with a friend, or in a studio, with a hundred other people of like-mind. Yoga can be, and is, enjoyed by children and seniors alike. It is health-giving, centering, relaxing, nurturing, and just plain fun.
However, even though Hatha Yoga is a gentle practice, and anyone can do it, it should be practiced safely, for the sake of avoiding injury. The fact is – we can injure ourselves at the dinner table if we take risks and refuse to pay attention to what we are doing. The following are some basic Yoga pose safety tips, to always keep in mind, in order to have the very best possible experience for many decades to come.
Encourage Awareness
First, ask your students to be completely aware of the body’s limits. Learning to actually listen to their bodies is a primary lesson for our students. An attentive Yoga instructor notices when a student is tight in his or her body, or when a student is pushing to excess. For teachers, it is wise to give a reminder that being kind to the body, and approaching the practice with a gentle mind, is the path of Yoga. Basic awareness applied to postures is knowing we ate too much to take part in asana practice. Moderate awareness is knowing your edge while holding your pose without force. Advanced awareness is applied “off the mat” to real life situations that could potentially save or improve one’s health. As you know, all levels of awareness enhance our intuition. Finding a peaceful way to avoid a potentially hazardous situation, before it happens, is advanced awareness applied to daily life.
Along these same lines, Yoga students sometimes need to be reminded that Yoga is not a competition. We live in a very competitive world. A student trying to match, or exceed, the veteran Yoga practitioner, standing next to him or her, is a likely occurrence. Accepting the mindset of being exactly where one is at this moment, and not to compete, may be difficult for the new Yoga student. Still, full awareness of the present is a central piece of Yogic philosophy, which will serve students throughout their lives, as well as in many applications toward daily life and Yoga pose safety tips.
Practicing in Comfort
Clothing needs to be comfortable, both physically and psychologically. If clothing is binding, it is not healthy for the part of the body it binds and may contribute to injuries when trying to get into Yoga postures. On the other hand, clothes that are too loose, and feel exposing in some poses, can take one’s mind off the practice. Not being mindful can lead to unsafe movement.
A building with an unstable foundation is a complicated and unsafe problem for everyone involved. During standing, or balancing asanas, our feet are the foundation of the Yoga pose. Luckily, we don’t have to hire engineers or consider implosion as a solution for an unstable Yoga pose.
Bare Yoga feet are safe feet. The only exception to this is – socks that are specifically made for Yoga practice. Feet can slip – even on a Yoga mat – when wearing regular socks. The Yoga practitioner will also feel more agile and flexible with bare feet. Your bare toes are able to completely stretch out, flex, and grip the mat, as necessary. There is also a grounding and healing energy flow, when bare hands and feet are in contact with the floor.
However, it must be noted that some practitioners wear Yoga socks, which grip the floor. There are a number of reasons for this. Some students may have skin diseases, diabetes skin lesions, or another justified reason for wearing nonslip Yoga socks. For students, who need to wear specialized socks, it might be wise to avoid Hot Yoga classes because the mats tend to get wet with perspiration. Yoga teachers, who have classes at moderate temperatures, should have no problem with students who wear specialized socks designed for Yoga.
Mindfulness, in employing a few basic safety procedures, during asana practice, allows for the full richness of the practice to students and instructors alike. Yoga pose safety tips don’t have to be complicated, but they require students and teachers to think with clarity. The best studios have policies to avoid clutter and overcrowded rooms. Whether we teach classes or practice at home alone, we need a safe and clear space for an optimum practice. This may require preparation time before practice, but something like spilled water on a hardwood floor is a potential accident.
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