Learning Yoga at Home – the pros and cons

Doing yoga at home is not just for yoga teachers… trying to figure out how to effectively teach
and hard-core yogis. It's what we should all beyoga online without compromising the integrity of
striving to do, in my opinion. Now, with the internet,yoga.  There have been many ups and downs along
it's easier than ever … but potentially dangerousthe way, and now, based on the feedback I get, I'd
too!say that I'm doing a fairly good job … at least
The internet didn't exist though, when I first startedcompared to what else is available online so far.
yoga. Perhaps that was a good thing. The only realI still teach yoga classes because I believe there is
option (to me at least) was going to India … themuch to be gained from them. But my experience
source, which is exactly what I did, spending years inhas shown me how limiting they can be, especially for
yoga ashrams and studying with various yogateaching students how to safely and confidently
teachers along the way.practice yoga at home, on their own.
But still, I felt like something was missing.  It wasn'tThe Internet has opened up a whole new realm of
until I found Swami Gitananda's "Yoga Step By Step"possibilities for yoga, but even though there are tens
correspondence course that the "yoga lightbulb(s)of thousands of yoga websites online already, most
finally came on. Yeah, I know … but this was noyoga teachers who created them still seem to be
ordinary yoga book. It was a yoga masterpiece, andstuck in their yoga classes … yet to realize the
my understanding of yoga has never been the samegreat teaching potential of this global medium.
since.Teaching people how to practice yoga at home,
But what I really got from it was an awareness offrom home, I think, is the way of the yoga future. If
how much is missing from yoga in the modern yogaonly just a few yoga teachers start to realize how
class approach, and how, when done skilfully, soto use the internet to effectively share the teachings
much more about yoga can be taught on paper andof yoga and get more people off the couch and
with visuals. Now with the video capabilities of thedoing yoga at home, then that future looks pretty
internet, we can leap even further.  enlightened to me.
I've been working on that for the past few years