The Biggest Block for People to Try Yoga

The biggest block is just getting there. The reason for that block is personal. You feel you’ll be judged for your lack of yoga knowledge. You feel your friends will think you’re a patchouli, granola, vegan cookie hippy. You can’t afford going every week, so why bother going once? What if I fart? My mat is a cheap TJ Maxx buy. 

Getting to your first class can be intimidating. You don’t know anything about yoga, and you assume everyone in your class knows everything about yoga. What we forget is that there is a professional teacher there ready and excited to teach you about what yoga is.

I’ve seen many times people sign up for a class online and then bail. Maybe something came up, maybe they had a conflict, maybe they accidentally signed up. Or maybe they lost the courage to come to the class they signed up for. 

If we can learn to accept that the first five minutes in a new location or experience are a bit wonky, then we can jump into many more new experiences. Yoga is like that. 

The biggest block people have that keeps them from visiting their first yoga class is the first five minutes of walking in the door and rolling out their mat. Imagine the last time you went to your spouse’s work party or sat down for a job interview or important meeting. The first 3-5 minutes might rattle you, but once you settle in, you’re good to go. Accept that you’ll feel a bit awkward as you settle into the first five minutes and then you’ll calm and feel more natural.

Yoga teachers know what it’s like to see students experiencing their first time because it happens every day in their classes. You might think that you’re the only new person in your yoga class. That’s almost never the case. Nearly all classes have brand new people or people who’ve practice fewer than a dozen times. So there’s no real cause for feeling alone showing up as a new yogi.