Mastering Advanced Yoga Practices: Elevate Your Yoga Journey

By Dennis Bluthardt, Namaste Studios

Why will mastering advanced yoga practices elevate your yoga journey?

Separately from the physical asanas, the art of mindfulness provides self-exploration, reducing stress and anxiety.

I cannot imagine my life without yoga. It lifted the physical and mental stress and years of inner turmoil from me and finally allowed me to see the best of myself and my path to happiness.

In teaching, advanced yoga is considered the art of being able to perform (and teach!) postures that are physically or energetically difficult. We refer to advanced postures as yoga that require understanding advanced asana and body mechanics, including functioning internal organs and fascial energy control. Understanding how fascia relates to the human range of motion is essential. In this way, the human body and all its possibilities become the intuitive, creative inspiration for the art of yoga. 

The Role of Breath and Meditation in Advanced Yoga

Pranayama, or breath control, is another critical advanced yoga skill affecting your physicality and mindset. By using our breath in specific ways (for instance, employing Ujjayi—a.k.a, victorious breath—or Nadi Shodhana, a.k.a. alternate nostril breathing techniques), we can upregulate or downregulate our energy. Pranayama gives us more access to different poses. It’s also a great, natural way to decrease anxiety and stress. After all, all you need is a deep breath! So many advanced practitioners like to finish their sessions with a Shavasana.

Because yoga is also a moving meditation, we can use our bodies to deepen this practice. You’ll focus on exactly what is: not what was, what’s about to be, or any part of it; just existing. When you’re flowing—or in deep stillness—and you allow the breath to take over, your body will follow. So, if your mind blows northward, your body will, too.

Interesting, right? Try it in practice. Do a studio session wholly focused. Talk to yourself through it because it is a challenge. Then do another straying all over the place, blowing yourself to the wind. Enjoy the process. It is practice, not time, spent doing yoga that will go toward becoming advanced.

Understanding Advanced Yoga

Advanced yoga is a deeper exploration of postures (asanas), breath control (pranayama), and meditation (dhyana) techniques that build upon foundational practices. While beginners focus on basic poses and alignment, intermediates work with skill refinement and building stamina, and advanced yogis play with complex asanas, seamlessly linked transitions, and advanced pranayama techniques. It is a beautiful way to explore what your body can do physically and develop a greater intuitive understanding of the mind-body connection.

In most advanced-level yoga classes, you will likely encounter asanas that require you to be very strong and flexible. A regular yoga practice will almost inevitably build both qualities in your body. Also, holding your body weight in extreme positions will make you a better rock climber and football player and virtually reduce your risk of bodily injuries during physical activity. Many asanas also require a lot of balance and coordination, so those are two more added benefits.

Your mind will also benefit greatly from advanced yoga. Advanced asanas are complicated—a quality typical of advanced yoga—and overly require too much reflection and going inwards in your body. Both actions are mindful acts that require a lot of energy to be allocated to thinking and being internally aware of what is happening now in the mind and body, which helps get rid of stress and future—or past-oriented negative thought patterns.

Key Yoga Asanas for Advanced Practitioners

Focus on a few yoga poses that build strength, flexibility, and balance. These poses should serve as the foundation or “building blocks” for the rest of your practice.

For example, being able to do a handstand (Adho Mukha Vrksasana) develops upper body strength, so this posture is vital to learn if you’re interested in mastering more inversion and arm balances. Also, because it requires core stability, shoulder strength, and engagement, you’re off to a great head start once you can do a handstand. Other balance postures also require more core stability and shoulder engagement!

Similarly, the crow pose (Bakasana) helps you learn to balance your weight with your feet off the ground and to engage your core. It may also be thought of as a “gateway” to other balance postures because you need to know how to engage your core and distribute your weight to balance with your feet off the ground.

The wheel pose (Urdhva Dhanurasana) not only aids in opening the chest and hips but also promotes flexibility and strength in the lower and upper back. In contrast, for wheel pose, simultaneous roles—emotional release and resilience—and creating physical sensations are subservient to its primary identity, a backbend.

Integrating Advanced Yoga into Your Routine

Getting advanced yoga into your daily routine requires some thought and a commitment to developing regular routines. Start by reserving some yoga time. You should work on yoga two or three times a week. Progress by increasing the duration of your workouts or raising the level of yoga you practice.

Work up to being involved with yoga every day. Work hard to develop the muscle memory skills you need to do the most demanding yoga poses. Raise the intensity of your training as you become more skillful at doing almost all poses. After a few months, you may find yourself working on a small number of yoga exercises at a high level. 

Progress through your new program by creating a development plan. The plan should include teachers, training, exceptional skill development (shoulders, back, legs, etc.), and other areas of interest. Think of yoga in the broadest way possible. For example, “yoga” is derived from an ancient language – Sanskrit. Yoga is a part of a vast family of human development issues with a long history in Southeast Asia. Do some reading, research, and some more thinking. You will most likely create a more well-rounded plan in the process.

Try to find a way to document your progress along the way. A simple path might be to journal your progress, audio record your progress, or video record your progress. A companion may be your best ally in the journey you are about to take.

Common Challenges in Advanced Yoga and How to Overcome Them

Those seeking to practice advanced yoga will encounter many obstacles that could dampen their spirits and impede their progress. These could range from lacking the required strength or flexibility to perform certain poses to feelings of self-doubt, frustration, or disappointment.

I employ two strategies to help cope with these obstacles to my yoga practice:

1. Modifications might mean using yoga blocks or straps, for instance, to help bring the ground up to you in standing poses or to support you in a pose (such as in a downward-facing dog). In other cases, this might involve doing a variation of the pose (e.g., one-legged wheel pose instead of complete wheel pose) where you are and with what you currently have. This way, you can continue to work toward building up your strength and flexibility without putting your body at risk of injury.
2. The second is to seek out ample guidance from a competent teacher. A seasoned instructor can help guide your practice of advanced poses, demonstrate the correct techniques, explain how a particular pose should feel, and explain which body parts should be switched on and engaged at any given time. Not only that, but they can also provide you with instructions on alternative approaches to try if you need to modify the pose. At the same time, you work up to the whole or ‘final’ version of the pose, thus catering to those of us in the room who may be dealing with injuries, health issues, or limitations of all types.

Advanced practice allows you to get deeper into your physical body and mind. The possibilities for new avenues to explore—deepening your flexibility, increasing your strength, and improving your mindfulness—are there to be brought alive. There is virtually no end to the number of asanas, postures, and types (e.g., kriyas; i.e., “practices”) of meditation you can try. If you learn to enjoy them, why not pursue the chance to take up more in the future?

If you want to take up yoga as a teacher (or expand on your meditation practice), you can start learning yoga as a scientific study. Anyone can study the science of yoga in great depth. Anyone who is reasonably severe about the essential practice of yoga is most likely opposed to the effects of it.

Often, how well you’ll be able to teach others (in retrospect) will be thought of—after the fact—as an enormous, life-changing journey you are glad you took, one that has made you a much better person.

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