Fitness Love : Yoga With Adriene

I fell in love with Yoga a few years ago. I’d always loved the idea of it but when I finally started going to classes it was more than the idea I liked. At that point I had decided to buy a gym membership for David Lloyd and certainly made the most of their twice weekly classes. However, when I left Glasgow I also gave up my gym membership, with rent prices doubling in London I couldn’t justify the amount it costed. Instead I wanted to find a new way to keep practicing this new found love of mine. Thanks to this post by Jayne of Girl Tweets World I was introduced to the wonder that is Adriene. Her Youtube videos have become a weekly part of my fitness for the last two years, especially at the moment while I train for the London Marathon.

Introducing Yoga With Adriene on YouTube

She produces a wide variety of yoga videos and has a wealth of videos on her very successful channel already. To top this off, each week there is a new video uploaded. The idea behind every video she creates is to ‘find what feels good’ and to embrace the home practice. Many of the videos feature nothing more than yourself and a yoga mat but trust me you don’t even need one of them to take on these videos. I have been known to do these straight on the carpet of my living room. Admittedly I do actually own a yoga mat now… They are the perfect home practice video no matter your yoga ability.

For the past two years through the month of January Adriene has put together a 30 days of Yoga series. The idea is that you begin the year with yoga everyday of January. My life has always been too busy to allow for this and last year it took me until April to finally complete them all. This year I have been a lot more committed and am onto day 21 already. I love these because it gives you a focus to your practice and a series to follow which draws me onto my mat more than having to find which video I want to do each time.

If you haven’t done yoga before but think you would like to give this a try then Adriene has a wealth of videos for beginners and plenty of videos which break down specific moves she uses in her practices. I already knew many of these before I started but for those that I didn’t, I used the ‘foundations of yoga‘ videos to get a firm understanding. It is important with yoga to really understand what you are stretching and how to get the most out of your body without doing any damage.

Another reason yoga has become such a focus in my life is because of how it keeps my back and neck pain to a minimum. During my teenage years I had an accident with the trampoline and ever since have suffered with back and neck. The older I get the worse I suffer and so yoga has become a great way of dealing with my lower back pain and neck pain. If you too suffer with these kinds of pains then I want to share with you the following videos, you need to be mindful when first trying them and never push yourself more than you can safely.

It isn’t just neck and back pain videos, Adriene has plenty of videos for healing including for stress, digestion, headaches etc.

Finally, Yoga with Adriene is perfect to do while you are traveling.

You can normally find enough space in your hotel room or hostel to do one of these practices or if you are in a hot and sunny place why not take your practice outside. All you need is some wifi and away you go.

This practice is perfect for when you are on the road (I also happen to love that the video is shot on location).