The importance of counting

My Yoga Teacher Training was very fruitful. There were a few basic things I learned which were beneficial to my day-to-day life. Among them was learning how to integrate stretches with my work and life, to relief stiffness and relax the mind. Believe it or not, one of the keys of doing yoga on your own, other than accuracy of the poses and building the sequences, is knowing how to count. If you don't hold the pose long enough, you may not be able to feel the effect of the practice, and you may give up on the home practice too soon.

Yes, to me, stretches and Yoga only work if the pose is held for a certain amount of time. As for how long, it varies. In the gym aerobic or body sculpt group class, some teachers count to 8, others count to 12, some others count backwards, 5, 4, 3, 2, and then 3, 2, 1, just so you hold a little longer. For Yoga poses, you can hold 5 counts to begin with, then later on hold for 1 to 2 minutes. If you are worried about how to make sure the length of each count is equal, just remember on average, 10 to 12 breaths takes 1 minute. You can see a Yoga home practice will also build your patience, because your mind can be easily distracted while doing Yoga at home.

In addition, to develop a home practice, you must allocate time in the day for the practice; build a sequence which works for you, so you can always rely on it to achieve your goal of the practice. Initially you can "borrow" your teacher's sequences, if you can remember them, then you can modify them for your own needs.

Some people just do headstand before going to bed, others do a few restorative Yoga poses. Yet others do a full practice with warm up, Sun Salutations, main sequence and cool down. If you do a practice for more than 30 minutes, I learned that it is important to finish up with a short 2-5 minutes Savasana, otherwise you can feel dizzy or queazy when you are done. The length of the Yoga practice is not as important, as long as it works for you and that you can do it everyday. Actually, it's not important that you do it everyday, as long as you know what to do when it is needed. Remember, it is a tool that works for you and your lifestyle.

The more I think about it, the more I realized how important counting is in our lives.

We count down to the new year or other important dates.

I count the throws for Jake to make sure he has enough fetching exercise in a session. That is 10 times per session, 3 sessions per day for Jake.

The healthy tooth brushing is 30 seconds per quadrant, two minutes total.

Some people count calories.

One maybe instructed to take certain medicine or do a certain regiment 2 or 3 times a day. Have a facial once every 6 weeks, a hair cut every 6 - 8 weeks, etc.

If we can't fall asleep, we count sheep.

Can you think of other examples?