Learn Yoga at Home ... it's the way of the future

Options for learning yoga at home were pretty scarce way back when I first started yoga. There were a few videos and books available, but nothing that could really teach you step by step what yoga was all about. The internet was still a long way away … I learned much of what I know about yoga from the source … India. I spent years travelling that magical place, and had several great yoga experiences along the way. But even after spending month after month in traditional Yoga Ashrams, a real profound sense of what yoga was all about still seemed to elude me somehow. But then I came across Swami Gitananda’s “Yoga Step by Step,” and everything changed. I had never seen a yoga book like it before, and I still have yet to see anything like it again today. Actually, it’s not just a yoga book. It’s a real comprehensive yoga correspondence course that changed my way of looking at yoga instruction forever. In fact, it changed my life! It showed me how much I was missing in yoga, and it also showed me how well yoga could be taught via photos, diagrams and the written word. Now with the video capabilities of the internet, it can be done even better! Years later, as a yoga teacher, I’m now capable of sharing that experience. Over the past few years, I’ve gotten a good reputation as the author of some well respected online yoga training programs, and I have Swami Gitananda, my guru, to thank for that. I still teach yoga classes because I believe there is much to be gained from them. But my experience has shown me how limiting they can be. It’s difficult to provide much depth of instruction in the modern yoga class setting, and difficult to teach students how to safely and confidently practice yoga at home. The Internet has opened up a whole new realm of possibilities for yoga There are tens of thousands of yoga websites online already, but for the most part, most yoga teachers who created them are still stuck in their yoga classes … yet to realize the great teaching potential of this global medium. Teaching people how to practice yoga at home, from home, is the way of the yoga future. If only just a few yoga teachers start to realize how to use the internet to effectively share the teachings of yoga and get more people off the couch and doing yoga at home, then that future looks enlightened indeed.