New to Yoga? How to Choose Your First Class

When you first encounter yoga, all the different names can be confusing. Hatha, Vinyasa, Yin, Ashtanga, Iyengar: which one is right for you?

No single style is necessarily better than another. The more important question is: what would you like to explore through yoga right now?

Some practices focus on the foundations of poses and body alignment. Some use continuous movement and breathing to explore flow within the body. Others hold positions longer, allowing the body to gradually settle into stretching and stillness.

Lapis Light Yoga asks: how do you use your body?

Lapis Light Yoga is concerned with another question: how do you use your body?

Two people may both touch the floor in a forward bend and look exactly alike. Yet one may be coordinating the hips, legs and torso, while the other habitually places all the strain on the lower back.

In Lapis Light Yoga, being able to do a movement is therefore not the only answer. Your teacher will often help you notice: where are you using effort now? Does that area really need to work so hard? Are the areas that should participate working together? Or has the body simply completed the movement in its most familiar way?

This is also why Lapis Light Yoga does not simply aim to feel comfortable. We discuss body structure, stability, muscle activation and how these work together. What we do not want is for the effort to get a pose right to become an even stronger attempt to control your body. Awareness and forceful control are two different things.

Bring attention back to the body and notice the flow of effort and breath

What we practice in Lapis Light Yoga is bringing attention back to the body: where does the effort begin? How does it travel through the body? Which areas are cooperating? Which area has quietly taken on work that was not meant for it?

Even breathing is more than an instruction to follow. When a movement makes you hold your breath, breathe shallowly or tense your whole body, that is a message from your body. So we do not ask everyone to breathe in the same way. Instead, we gradually learn to understand what is happening in our own bodies now.

Nor is the final aim of Lapis Light Yoga to make you monitor whether you are using each muscle correctly every time you move.

Quite the opposite. At first, we need to consciously notice our existing habits. Through practice, we develop new ways of moving. As the body gradually integrates these abilities, you no longer need to keep thinking about them, because they become options your body can naturally use.

Lapis Light Yoga: a process of relearning how to use the body

So, if you ask what kind of yoga Lapis Light Yoga is,

rather than defining it as a particular style, we would describe it as a process of relearning how to use the body.

We do not simply want to teach you more poses. We hope each practice helps you understand your body better, gradually developing more choices where there was once only a single habitual way.

If you would like to discover how your body usually applies effort and compensates, you are welcome to try a Lapis Light Yoga class. You do not need previous yoga experience or flexibility. You can begin practicing with the body you have right now.