First, pat yourself on the back for noticing your “stuck-ness.” Many yogis practice for years without ever realizing that although they’re exercising the physical body, most of their potential for transformation has remained untapped.

The second thing to do is to assess your practice: Are you sitting for meditation daily? Are you practicing pranayama and the other limbs as Patanjali prescribed? If not, you should begin to add practices to your personal routine. Your local studio may offer meditation and/or pranayama instruction; if so, it’s a great idea to take advantage of it. But not all studios do, so this is where we yogis have to take responsibility for our own advancement on the Path. 

TheYoga Ignition course is meant to introduce you to integral practices that will help get you out of a rut (if that’s where you find yourself) as well as to provide a structural template for your personal practice that you can update as appropriate. Patanjali’s eight limbs of Yoga are meant to be practiced in such a way that they support and amplify each other to create the right conditions of Self-realization to arise.

Strictly speaking, your physical body is all that’s required to successfully pursue the Yogic path. But certain basic accessories can make the practices safer (asana) and more comfortable, and sometimes more effective as well.

A yoga mat, meditation cushion, wool blanket, and mala beads are my top recommendations to have on hand for the Yoga Ignition course. You can also peruse the Accessories page for examples of other items that may call to you. Let your intuition guide you: If a statue or image of a particular deity resonates with you, for example, the energies associated with that deity may be exactly what your practice and progress need to ensure the greatest benefit.

Two of Patanjali’s eight limbs of Yoga are the yamas and the niyamas, or restraints and practices. You may hear them referred to as the “10 commandments of yoga.” They are guidelines for living in the material world in order to best support progress on the spiritual path. 

The yamas and niyamas are not rules, per se, but approaches to living that keep us in alignment with the highest good for all. For example, one of the yamas is satya, or truthfulness. To practice satya is not only to avoid telling lies, but to live truthfully, according to one’s highest ideals and wisdom.

A full description of the yamas and niyamas would be impractical here, but I highly recommend you read Swami Satchidananda’s excellent commentary on The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali for deep, detailed explanations of the yamas and niyamas. There’s a link to the book in the box beneath this question.

It’s important to keep in mind that more difficult postures do not necessarily mean you are more advanced as a Yogi. So although mastering challenging asanas can be exciting, it does not equal Yogic accomplishment. 

Every physical body is different, so some postures may be accessible to you if you work toward them, while others will be forever out of reach — and that’s OK. If your goal is to be an advanced practitioner of Yoga, the subtle layers of Being (the koshas) all must be developed, not just the physical container; we work with the physical body using asana, pranayama, and sitting for meditation in order to work with those aspects of ourselves that are not discernible with our physical senses. The physical body, then, is the instrument of our advancement, but not the proof.

But if mastering challenging postures calls to you, the best approach is to keep aa consistent asana practice (ideally every day). As your body grows stronger and attains greater mobility, you’ll notice that some postures naturally “suggest” their next iteration. I’ve seen students come up with their own variations in the middle of class just out of curiosity (something I encourage them to do as long as they’re mindful of safety). And of course, there are plenty of free videos that will help you approach postures that are of particular interest to you. But be patient with yourself, because every physical body opens in its own time, and to force it into positions it’s not ready for can lead to injury. 

The single most powerful thing you can do is to practice every single day without fail, even if you can only manage five minutes.

There are specific techniques we can use to help achieve deeper meditation — some of which I cover in the course — but much of your advancement will result from observing your experiences while sitting. Some aspects of meditation are purely intuitive — noticing shifts in your awareness and learning how to facilitate them, for example — and you can’t intuit them if you don’t sit.

Sitting at the same time each day also helps you learn to adapt shift your brainwaves to those associated with meditation more easily. So will using a set routine such as opening with mantra, sitting in a particular way, using a bell or a mala, etc.

Know, too, that Grace will support your efforts at meditation as well, especially if you are devotedly consistent. Sometimes even when it feels as though your practice is stagnant (perhaps especially then), there is nonetheless immense growth going on at the subtle level. That growth will eventually reveal itself to your conscious understanding if you simply keep showing up to your seat. 

Have you read my Five Tips for Better Meditation yet? If not, check them out here.

Yes, 100 percent. Pranayama is one of the eight limbs of Yoga as described by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras. In fact, I don’t think you can make significant progress in a yoga practice without including pranayama. Prana means life force energy and yama (restraint) implies conscious direction or control. One of the goals of our practice as a whole is to learn to control our life force energy. 

At the very least you should be practicing daily nadi shodhana (single nostril breathing) to help condition our nervous system and keep your masculine/feminine energies in balance. This is one of the techniques I include in the course and is suitable for yogis of all levels. There are also many other pranayama techniques that help move prana in the body in specific ways. These become appropriate at intermediate levels and above.

Studying yoga philosophy will help you put your whole practice into the proper context so that you understand how and why the practices work together. 

If you have no concept of the greater system of yoga, you may be practicing asana, meditation, mantra, or other practices a la carte, when they are actually intended to “leverage” each other. There is nothing particularly harmful about doing so; many people do. But you are cheating yourself of the “ignition” that results from a sustained, comprehensive practice — which is what this course is about.

Aha, I love this question. “Yoga lifestyle” is such a misused and confusing concept — I could write a course on this alone, but I’ll try to answer in brief.

Let’s start with diet: Avoid processed foods and things laden with chemicals. Eat foods in their whole state as much as possible — including plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, which offer vibrant prana. Beyond that, listen to your body. Many yogis, myself included, avoid meat because we don’t wish to contribute the cruelty involved, but to my understanding there is no specific rule in yoga prohibiting it.

That said, one of the yamas in yoga is ahimsa, or non-harming, which some yogis interpret to include killing animals for food. However as Sadhguru has said, “You have the right to be nourished” like any other creature born on this planet. If the physical body gets protein-starved, it may need animal protein to correct the situation. Use your wisdom and best judgment to determine what’s correct for you. This is a very personal choice.

Alcohol and chemical intoxicants (including caffeine) are generally considered incompatible with yogic practice due to their detrimental effects on the nervous system. If you are a beginning yogi and indulge very occasionally, you may notice little effect. However as you advance and “clean” your nervous system, you’ll start to understand exactly why they’re discouraged.

Think of it this way: In a old junker of a car, you probably wouldn’t notice a difference if you were to fill the tank with old or low-octane gas. However, in a Formula One race car, fuel quality is absolutely critical for performance.

Committed yogis encounter all kinds of lifestyle challenges as their bodies become sensitized to more subtle energies — anything from sleep patterns to clothing to colors in your home to the people you spend time with will affect you in various ways.

The practices of Ayurveda can be used to address the needs of the physical body, and the yamas and niyamas (sometimes called the “10 commandments of Yoga”) are an excellent guide to right living. But your lifestyle choices are very individual and will evolve continuously along with your practice, so there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. Discovering what works best for your practice, your body, and your mental and emotional well being are all part of the process of yogic unfolding.

When you first begin, a sense of increased balance and peace are probably most noticeable, even if you are practicing asana alone. The practices of yoga are designed to help you move energy through the body so that it no longer stagnates. As inner tension is resolved, most people become less prone to spinning out, getting triggered, and brooding on things they can’t change. 

I should clarify though that for some people — we consider them the “lucky ones,” lol — yoga will make them feel decidedly less peaceful at times. This happens when yoga is purifying you at the deepest layers of your psyche, as I explain in this blog post. In my experience that means kundalini has become active and the Awakening process is underway. 

As your practice deepens, your perception of reality will begin to change — you will begin to exercise less judgment about people and things, and feel less sense of separation from them. Yoga, of course, means “union” and although people commonly interpret that to mean union between body, mind, and spirit, it also implies union with all that exists. It is a very favorable sign when you have a deep experience yourself as having no separation from another person, animal, plant, or the universe as a whole. Such is the experience of nonduality, or knowing oneself to be an indispensable thread in the fabric of All that Is.

Although arm balances, inversions, and the more intricate postures can be fun to master, they are for the most part just options that are *not* necessary for you to advance as a Yogi. I don’t teach them in the Yoga Ignition course because this course — like the advance practices of Yoga — is not asana-centered and is meant to be accessible to everyone who feels called to it.

If your goal is to be an advanced practitioner of Yoga, the subtle layers of Being (the koshas) all must be developed, not just the physical container. The physical body is the tool we use to do this; asana, pranayama, and sitting for meditation — although they involve the physical vessel — affect those aspects of ourselves that are not discernible to our physical senses. In advanced yoga, the really deep work is going on below the level of our awareness — that is, until we’ve developed our awareness such that we are able to perceive it.

The physical body, then, is the instrument of our advancement, but not the proof. It is the one tangible thing we can use to elevate our Consciousness. There are 84 core postures in the Hatha Yoga system, plus endless variations. You don’t need them all; many exist to address specific needs. For most yogis, just practicing the simplest version — *consistently* — is enough.

The shatkarmas — cleansing practices for the physical body in Hatha Yoga — are not something we need practice daily (although some Yogis do). Generally it is enough to use them only as needed unless you’re working with a particular technique that demands your system be particularly purified.

There are some shatkarmas that would might pretty bizarre by Western standards (mula shodhana, or cleansing of the rectum, for example). But practices such as jala neti — flushing the nasal passages with a neti pot — can be very helpful for us householder yogis during allergy season, for example.

I detail a couple of the more accessible and useful practices in the Course. As for the rest, you can search the internet for additional details if you’re interested. In practice, it’s good to know they exist, but are mostly used in very specific  circumstances.