Bored of your regular yoga routine? Here are 5 ways to shake up your yoga practice

Us human beings are a funny lot.

We tend to love and hate routine in equal measure. We need some of it to find stability and security in our life, yet too much can leave us feeling stagnant and just a little bit bored. Finding the balance is always a tightrope act and yoga is no different.

Once you’ve started to build up a regular yoga practice, you may find yourself getting stuck in a bit of a rut. Perhaps you’ve been taking the same classes for some time, or always find yourself doing the same tried and tested asanas at home. So here’s 5 ways to beat the boredom and freshen up your yoga routine:

1. Try something new
Studies have shown that around 40 percent of everything you do in your daily life is simply down to habit. So stepping out of those habits that have formed around your yoga practice is one of the easiest ways to shake off your boredom. Maybe now is the time to experiment with a different style of yoga? Attend a different class with a different teacher, try out some new online classes or even sign up for a yoga workshop.

2. Learn or study a different side of yoga
Don’t forget that there’s more to yoga than just asana’s. The yoga lifestyle has many branches to explore, so take some time to study other sides to yoga. You could read up on and learn more about bandas, mantras or mudras. You may want to work more on your breath and meditation for a while. Just the joy of learning something new, or in greater detail, will do wonders.

3. Get seasonal
Let the changing seasons inspire your practice. That way you can best use lifes naturally changing energies to your advantage. In autumn and winter months look towards grounding, warming and centering sequences. In summer your focus is more likely to be on calming and coolings routines, whilst spring is a time for re-energising and invigorating.

4. Push your comfort zone
Often we get bored when we outgrow something, so set yourself a challenge. Play around with some tricky poses just for the fun of it. Choose an asana you’d love to be able to do and work towards it. Never stop growing.

5. Shift your perspective
Shifting your perspective can be as simple as just moving your mat somewhere new or changing the time of day which you normally practice yoga. Yet it’s also important to remember that sometimes in life we cannot change our external circumstances, but we can always change our mindset. Accepting and overcoming feelings of boredom is a mindfulness practice in itself! As French novelist Marcel Proust said “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”