How to Be More Consistent (And Content) With Your At-Home Yoga Practice | Dean Pohlman | Better Man Podcast Ep. 096

Hey, guys, it’s Dean. Welcome to the Better Man podcast. Today’s episode is a solo episode, and in this episode I want to give you some advice and some strategies that you can utilize when it comes to your at home yoga practice. I know I’m actually going to be talking about yoga on the Better Man podcast from Man for Yoga and I want to do this because I see a lot of people making mistakes with their expectations over there at home yoga practice.

I see a lot of people who feel guilty about not doing as much or focusing on other things instead of their yoga practice. I also see a lot of people who aren’t doing it consistently, even though they know it’s it’s really helpful for them. So I want to give you some advice, some things that have worked for me, some things that I’ve noticed that have worked within the band for yoga community to help you just get more out of your at home yoga practice.

And so the first thing I want to talk about is understanding that your fitness has seasons. So I see this in the community sometimes that people, you know, for whatever reason they’re running more than they usually do, or they’re doing more lifting, more weight lifting than the usual going to the gym more often. And that’s coming at the expense of their yoga practice.

And they feel guilty about it. They feel like they should be doing more yoga. And I want to say that it’s normal for you or fitness to have seasons. You’re going to gravitate towards certain movement practices more than others at certain times of your life. Me, for example, I spent probably five years only doing yoga, and then I started lifting weights consistently and I started focusing my time, lifting weights, less time on doing yoga.

And I did feel guilty about that initially because I’m like, I’m a yoga instructor. I’ve got this, you know, this amazing mission and this brand and this community. And they’re expecting me to do yoga and and and that that guilt was not productive because I still had great levels of mobility. My body still felt good. I was just focusing on something, on something new.

And then and then, you know, sometimes I will be less intense with my weight lifting. I am more focused on my yoga practice. So just recognize that your fitness has seasons and and go with them. Right. The important thing isn’t that you’re doing yoga necessarily. The important thing is that you’re exercising and that you’re staying consistent with some sort of movement practice, some sort of exercise, whether that’s walking, lifting weights, you know, just getting that excess physical energy out.

Second thing is to make sure that you’re setting realistic goals for yourself. You know, there’s a tendency to want to say, I’m going to do a yoga session, a one hour yoga session every day, four or six days per week, and then, you know, you get through a couple of days and you realize, wow, that’s a lot of time.

I don’t I don’t really have time for this. So, you know, recognize that yoga can be helpful even if it’s just for a few minutes per day. And you can start with something small. You can start with a really small practice. It can be it could be even 2 minutes. It could be it could be 5 minutes, it could be you just doing two poses.

But as long as you’re being present when you’re doing those poses, you’re focusing on your body, you’re focusing on your breathing, you’re focusing on just doing going a little bit further than you thought you could. Right. Just pushing yourself a little bit. That’s where you’re going to see the benefits. You don’t have to do an hour of yoga practice in order for it to be effective.

Just a few minutes here and there as effective and your consistency is way more important than one heroic yoga workout. So be realistic and it’s okay to smart, start small and grow from there. The consistency is way more important than you know. If you do one one hour yoga session once a month. I also think you should you should recognize how your energy levels specifically change for you throughout the day.

So some people have a lot of energy in the mornings and they’re able to do a really intense yoga session, right? They’re able to choose like a, you know, a 30 minute plus yoga workout. That’s a four or five intensity from the mental yoga workout library. And they’re able to do that in the morning and feel good. But like for me to jump straight into a really intense yoga session in the morning, it it takes a lot out of me.

So for me, I like to focus on more low or medium intensity routines in the morning. That’s just that’s just how I am. I don’t question it. I don’t really judge it. I just I take it as, this is what my body feels like doing in the morning. And then I like to do more intense workouts in the afternoon or the early evening.

And that’s kind of the that was the impetus for me creating this new workout series we just released in the member’s area. It’s called AM Yoga PM Lifting. And the whole idea behind that is I like doing a less intense workout in the morning and then I do my more intense workouts in the evening because I grew up playing sports in high school and college and my more intense workouts were in the in the afternoon.

In the evening they weren’t in the morning. So that’s just what works for me. So just be aware of your energy levels and then make sure that you’re exercising accordingly. Don’t feel like you have to do your intense workout in the morning if that’s not what you if that’s not what your body enjoys. The other thing I wrote here is to to be willing to be creative or nonconformist when it comes to your movement.

Practice. So, you know, one thing that I do is I will stretch throughout the day. Like even this morning I was doing a podcast episode and I was standing here and I decided to do some, you know, some some hip stretching and some calf stretching. I was here at my standup desk when I’m watching TV with my wife at home, probably 50% of the time I will stand up from the couch and I will start doing some stretches.

I’m able to watch the TV still. I’m able to be there, be present with my wife, but I’m also getting in some movement for my body at a time when I really wouldn’t be doing much else or getting anything else done. So try to be be willing to question conformity or to be creative with how you fit your yoga practice in.

I hear about people standing on one foot while they brush their teeth or while they’re, you know, in the kitchen cooking or making coffee. So, you know, figure out how you can incorporate more of this into your daily lifestyle and and recognize that you don’t have to be following along to a video in order to do it right.

You can you can do it unguided. And one of the I think one of the coolest compliments that one of the most rewarding compliments that I receive from people can be the ones who say, you know what, I don’t actually watch your workouts anymore because I learned so much that I’m able to know. I know what I need to do for myself.

So most of the time I don’t need a workout. I’m able to, if I notice that I’m feeling a particular way, I know what stretches, I know what poses I need to do to get my body feeling better. But then if I do want to have, you know, a workout where I’m pushing myself more and able to push myself beyond what I would normally be able to push myself to do on my own, that’s when following along to a workout can be helpful.

It also just reduces a lot of the willpower necessary to do a workout. So following along will make it a lot easier to do. But point is to you don’t have to feel obligated to follow along to something, and that also makes it a lot easier for you to to do it more often, to do it more consistently.

You also don’t need to be excited for your yoga workout. You just have to do it and you can modify the workout. You know, you can do less intense, you can do the poses in a way that’s less demanding. You don’t have to go as deep. You don’t have to push yourself as much, but you don’t have to be excited to to do your workout.

You just have to remember that it’s something that’s important to you. And one of the one of the most one of the best ways you can motivate yourself to do your yoga workouts more frequently is to remember how much better you feel when you do them. And this is a this is one of the strategies that’s frequently mentioned from our members.

I surveyed people and I asked like, Hey, like, what helps you be consistent with your workouts? And this was a really surprisingly popular answer, was that people just said, Well, I just remember how much better my body feels, how much, how much more clear my mind is, how much better my days are when I remember to do manual yoga in the morning.

And so one of the strategies that you can utilize is just to be present in how you feel after you do a yoga workout. Just notice how much better you feel. Notice how much less stress you feel. You can journal about it. And to help remind yourself to be present in it. To be present. And I mean that you can to be present.

I mean that you can experience it to the point that you’re able to recall that feeling later on and to be able to say, you know, I felt really good after I finished the yoga workout or I felt my body felt really good during the day after I did that yoga workout. And so I should remember to do it more.

I just finished up an interview, podcast interview where we had where we had the Gallup couple, couple higher ups from the Gallup Institute on to talk about statistics on workplace and overall health and wellness for men and women, too. But one thing they mentioned was there are certain types of people who will are able to prevent burnout by, I think they said 44% when they engage in physical exercise.

So, you know, I think a lot of us will tend to avoid exercise or self-care because we think that it’s not conducive to our overall financial goals, professional goals or family goals. It can kind of be seen as a distraction or selfish. Take that time, but you’re going to be better for yourself, for your family, for your job when you do take time to focus on your fitness.

So, you know, it might seem difficult to set aside that 30 minutes in the morning, but keep in mind, you don’t have to do 30 minutes. You can do 20 minutes, you can do 15 minutes, you can do 10 minutes if you want to follow along to a 60 minute workout and only do 20 minutes of it, that’s also something you can do.

So be aware. You don’t have to follow along to the entire workout to get some out something out of it. I know there is the mentality of the all or nothing that can creep in here. You feel like you’re not getting any of the benefit because you’re not doing all of it. But that is a that is a story that you’re telling yourself that is not true.

You are getting something out of it. So my my last tip here is to remember how much better you feel when you do your yoga and let that be motivation for you to be more consistent. So if you guys need help being more consistent with your workouts, we do have a getting started guide that I built into the mental yoga app and member’s area, which is really comprehensive and basically a a a very useful resource for going into strategies, tips and practices you can utilize to be more consistent.

It’s also very helpful to follow a program that allows all of our programs in mental yoga, have schedules of workouts to follow so you don’t have to think about which workout you’re doing next. You just see what workout is next. And then you do it. You play it, you load it, you load it, you put it on your TV or on your phone, you press play, you follow along, and you do the best that you can on that day, right?

Some days you’re going to be better than others, but you just do the best that you can that day. And then there are some days when you know life is going to get in the way. Maybe your child is sick at school, maybe something comes up with work, maybe you’re sick. And you know, you you have to recognize your own physical limitations and sit for the day.

And that’s okay. So on those days, you you acknowledge that, you know, today’s just not a day to work out that this is still important to you and you’ll do it again when you can, but you don’t feel guilty about it, right? You just let it go and then you try again the next day. You never win fitness.

You just do the best you can that day. So I hope this inspires you. I hope this gives you some helpful information. If you haven’t already, you can do our free seven day challenge at man for yoga dot com slash seven DC. We also have a sexual wellness challenge seven day sexual wellness challenge that you can do for free.

Both of those challenges no credit card required just go to the links in the podcast Shownotes. Sign up and get going. So thank you for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope to see you on another video soon. Be sure to follow me on for yoga on YouTube. We’re also on Instagram and Facebook. We’re on TikTok, but we don’t do a lot there.

We’re getting close to 500,000 subscribers on YouTube. Hopefully we get that within the next few months. That would be pretty cool. And our Instagram has also been doing very well. I think we’re about over 40,000 there. And at Facebook we have over 120,000 followers. So thanks for all your support there. And then lastly, if you have been getting stuff out of this podcast, please consider leaving a review.

You can do that on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify wherever you listen. And then there are video versions of the podcast on the Better Man Podcast YouTube channel, as well as in the Mansfield Yoga app and the members area. All right, guys, be on my email list for more updates. We’ve got events going on. We’re working on Beta 2.0 for Engage, making improvements there.

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