Starting Yoga

The Ultimate Guide to Starting Yoga: Essential Guides and Tutorials for Beginners

By Dennis Bluthardt, Namaste Studios

The wellness world has focused heavily on yoga over the last few years, and for good reason. The history of yoga aside, there are some excellent (proven) benefits to doing yoga. These benefits range from mental well-being to physical health, all encouraging you to pursue your yoga journey if you wish to.

Yoga will improve strength, flexibility, and balance as you move your body on a mat through various flows. Mentally, though, it’s the perfect companion for relaxation and finding a bit of calm in your day, encouraging you to stress less. Yoga has even been found to help with mindfulness!

This is why this article was written. To help you find the yoga classes that suit you, get your ideas on different styles of yoga you’d like to try (such as Hatha, Slow Flow, or Kundalini), and understand basic poses just to get started as a beginner. It’s your essential yoga guide, written by someone who once questioned the best kind of yoga for beginners.

Starting a new exercise routine is hard enough. Let’s not complicate things by poorly explaining your ideas to get your hands on some accessible beginner content, from yoga flow tutorials online to blogs written in bustling yoga studios worldwide.

Step-by-Step Yoga Tutorials

Mastering a new yoga pose, tips, advice, and tutorials. Alignment is crucial in yoga, along with knowing how to breathe. The only way to often know how to align the pose correctly with your body or learn how to breathe properly is through a structured yoga tutorial. Without this knowledge, begging yogis and longtime practitioners are bound to compromise their practice as they risk injuring themselves or doing more harm than good.

You can find yoga tutorials online on many platforms, some free, some not. YouTube, Yoga with Adrienne, and Gaia (formerly Gaiam TV) are just some of the few offering viewers yoga tutorials on practicing, ranging from basic to more intricate yoga flows. Alo Moves and Glo are paid websites that offer comprehensive yoga tutorials. These yoga tutorial platforms nearly always begin with the basics, Downward Dog, Warrior I, and Child’s Pose, presenting viewers with straightforward readability of the poses and testing their arm, leg, and back strengths.

Beginner yogis may find practicing with a yoga tutorial designed to demonstrate fundamental sequence flows beneficial. Yoga with Adrienne’s yoga tutorial practice, “Yoga for Beginners,” is a great place to start, as is Glo’s “Foundational Yoga Poses.”

Yoga Instruction: Tips for Getting Started

Establishing a dedicated space is vital for people starting yoga. That space needs to be quiet and free from interruptions so you can fully concentrate on your practice. A clean, clear area with enough room to stretch all limbs fully will enhance your practice. The space should be a generally pleasant place to add to the lovely, calming feelings of practicing yoga. Personalize the space; make it your own. Add a candle or a house plant or two if you’re inclined.

The method of yoga instruction will affect the type of equipment you need. Some beginners’ yoga practices will start right on the floor with a mat and possibly a block for some alignment and balance support. There is specific yoga equipment on the market: mats with differing degrees of grip and cushioning; blocks and belts to help align your body and provide extra reach where your body can’t yet; and things like meditation cushions and stools to support your yoga practice. I recommend just starting with a proper yoga mat.

How many times have I heard this in yoga classes over the years? Listen to your body! This is so important when you are starting a home yoga practice. You know your body better than anybody, so take it very slowly to start and only go as far as your body can comfortably accommodate with any stretch at any time.

This is where magic can happen when you start doing yoga regularly. Do small bits of yoga throughout your day. You’ll see the small changes that can be transformative: beginning to unwind the tension from the day behind you, preparing for bedtime with just 15 minutes, or starting in morning stretches.

Understanding Yoga for Beginners

Yoga is a mind-and-body practice that combines physical postures, breath control, and meditation or relaxation. It originated in ancient India. There are many different styles of yoga: some emphasize the strict alignment of postures, while others give you a foundation and structure. For example, Hatha is all about the basics and learning to breathe. Vinyasa is all about integrating movement and breath, almost like a dance. Ashtanga, a style of yoga that follows an exact series of postures every time, is performed with the same breathing style. You should find a style that fits you!

If you’re new to yoga, you’re about to embark on a journey that goes way beyond the physical dimension of your mat! At the beginning of your (yoga) career, you’ll get to understand and work much more on the physical postures (asanas) and sequences. Following the “order of operations,” like in math, you’ll enter a new world with its language that combines physical strength, flexibility, and balance, all accompanied and influenced by renewing mental tranquility. Once you get used to it, you’ll feel your body is changing and moving in a new direction. And you’ll learn to create new internal thoughts that help you feel new energy and generate new feelings. In the end, you’ll feel just good.

Apart from that, yoga is an excellent tool for managing the stress of your daily life, be it work, studies, or relationships. Especially for people beginning to practice yoga, it combines the synchronization of breath with movement, calm, peace of mind, and visualization. Practicing yoga regularly will also lead to new changes and improvements on a holistic level, both physically and mentally.

Essential Yoga Guides for New Practitioners

Yoga has become so mainstream that you can now find instruction in many different guides, from books to pages on the Internet to smartphone apps. Each has its advantages. Many people process information and learn new things in their unique ways, which explains why books continue to thrive in the online bookselling business; a lot of people still prefer to hold a hard-copy book in their hands and read it, and this typically includes (like most yoga instruction books will offer) written, long-form knowledge and detailed photographs to explain and illustrate.

Many of the top recommendations (which are really “must-reads” on any serious yogi’s list) on this list are there to set up the raw beginner for yoga success; this usually involves having something helpful to read, with plentiful illustrations right from the very first day. These books often take an approach that builds confidence through instruction in basic postures and breathing styles and gives the beginner a “safe and comfortable” place to start.

These books (listed below) will teach basic hatha yoga, leaning toward a more popular and (to some) more interesting and innovative style. A book about how to “do” yoga is, by its very nature, designed to attract beginning students, especially (but not exclusively), who will choose it based on its intriguing, helpful, functional, and instructive cover imagery.

Finding the Right Yoga Classes

Choosing the right yoga class for you as a beginner can make all the difference in your enjoyment and the solid foundation you build!

Considering the two in-person and online yoga options, you must consider your comfort level and learning style. In person, you can interact directly with a teacher who can give immediate feedback on your form, correct your alignment, and answer questions on the spot. Online, you can practice in the comfort and convenience of your home at a time that suits you.

In the typical yoga class, a whole group of complete beginners, all lined up in a row or two, feel like you. Here, you can learn all the basic poses, get your alignment down, safety first, etc. Here, you are also part of a group or a community. No matter what you say, meeting in the same place once or twice weekly for an hour or two will start feeling like “home.”

Research a high-quality yoga class that offers a beginner series, workshop, program, or similar offering. Navigate to the “program” section on the website or app, often to find complete beginner series and programs.

Yoga will change you; there’s no doubt about it. But what it won’t do in the beginning when you’re just starting is make any sense. At all. And that’s why yoga guides, classes, and tutorials are essential from the beginning. They encourage students to learn things the right way and not the wrong way. As a beginner, that is when you’re learning about concepts fundamental to yoga as a lifestyle. These are the things like how to align yourself, how to breathe correctly, and certain wisdom about the practice you can keep with you forever on your mat. The rest of this wisdom is usually just passed on through a teacher’s guide. You don’t have that as a beginner simply because your practice has yet to be developed.

Start practicing. The hardest part is showing up. You can go to a class and follow along, try out a super basic (probably more elaborative, too) tutorial, or pull a guide up. It may affect the amount of awareness you develop initially, but some argue about that. Use the comments section to let me know if you have any other feedback or comments or want to ask about something else. 

Otherwise, you can comment to join the discussion with others who have read this! Who is this guide for? Who are you? Don’t make this a one-sided conversation. This site is at its best when more than one person is dictating what’s happening here. Yoga takes a community to grab onto the journey to well-being and self-realization! So, join in with me and everyone else!