Advice - Previous Avid Yogi, Now Overweight + Out of Shape
2 Comments
Louis Alley, Level 32
Enthusiast
8 years ago

As for experts, I'd start with Celest:

Celest Pereira

We filmed 2 beginner yoga series with a focus on short videos and fundamentals:

3 Steps to Yoga with Celest Pereira

and

Yoga Basics: The Beginner's Guide with Celest

I would start with these not to learn the postures, but just because it's a great mix of different body parts and goals, and Celest is excellent. The "3 Steps to Yoga" videos in particular were filmed to help people transition from doing nothing to spending at least some time on the mat on a regular basis. *I'd love your feedback on them b/c helping people with this transition period is very important to Grokker.*

I'm an engineer who writes code, so I don't move much during the day, and in particular I have a bad upper back. I didn't do any yoga at all until October of last year, and since then I've been doing it 4+ times a week. I started barely able to touch my toes, and now I can put my palms on the floor. Here's what has worked for me:

1) Yoga mat lives on the couch. I can't watch TV without the shame of moving it out of the way.

2) *Consistency over difficulty.* On days when I don't feel like doing it, I pick out a video that's short or easy, and if all I do is 15 minutes that day, then all I do is 15 minutes, but the goal is to train myself to keep coming back to the mat rather than to maintain any particulary standard of difficulty. Usually what happens is after I do a 15 minute video the 30 minute video is way more appealing. So really that first video is to trick myself into feeling good enough to do the harder video.

3) Coordinate with meal times. This is the hardest for me. I get home around 6:30PM, and then I usually need to eat pretty soon. In my ideal world, I eat a snack, do the yoga, and then eat dinner / protein shake. But often somebody will call or something prevents me, so then I have to go ahead and eat dinner and then wait an hour, so I'm at like 9:30PM. After 9PM my brain really resists. Anyway, point is I try to get specific about when I eat in relation, so I have the energy for it and so the schedule works out.

4) I mark "I Did This" when I finish the video. That automatically generates a calendar on the logged in home page here, and it's satisfying to see all those days with complete circles.

5) I use the Grokker Apple Watch app to do the workouts with my iPhone. My workout buddies get notifications when I do the yoga and send me back silly messages. It's not a game changer but it gives me some heart rate data and adds to a sense of community.

6) I found an expert / videos I liked (Andrew Sealy / Metabolism Boosting Yoga) and I do the same stuff over and over again. At this point I've done one video 57 times and another 22. A lot of people tell me they could never do the same video - they'd get bored. And I get that. For me, everything I'm doing is about trying to game psychology to build a habit and reduce to mental resistance to changing my behavior to exercise more. So I want the same routine. I don't want to have to think about the sequence of moves, and I've actually found that doing the same routine over and over again allows me to focus more on my body and less on transitioning from one posture to another.

7) I use a bluetooth speaker w/ my phone. It makes the music sound better, which sounds kind of lame, but by the 10th time doing the same video, the music is what I'm paying the most attention to.

JENNIFER DOCAMPO, Level 1
Enthusiast
8 years ago

So I was a very avid yogi for several years but due to life and stress let myself go and gained over 70 pounds.

I want to get back into my practice but would like to restart in the comfort of my own home. I am familiar on how to use the postures correctly, but with my new and unfamiliar body have trouble with it in practice.

Does anyone have any video recommendations that are good for "plus-sized" yogis? Good way to restart?

Thanks!!

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