Peloton's Ultimate Guide to Yoga for Beginners

Picture, if you will, your own personal vision of someone who does yoga. Do they look a certain way? Wear specific clothes? Have a preternatural ability to bend and stretch beyond what you’d assumed was humanly possible? 

Well, it’s time to put all those preconceived notions to rest. The truth is yoga can be practiced by anyone, no matter your fitness level or experience, and the practice provides numerous health benefits for both the body and mind. Depending on what type of yoga you favor, your flow can be slow and gentle, or more fast-paced and heart-pumping. But whatever type you fall in love with, yoga is meant to meet you right where you are and help you form a mind-body connection that will serve you both in the moment and well into the future. 

New to yoga? You’ve come to the perfect place. In this guide to yoga for beginners, we’ll look at why yoga is such an effective and attractive workout and some of the key yoga benefits. We’ll also outline how to approach yoga as a first-timer and go over a few basic yoga poses for beginners to start you on your journey. We even tapped Peloton yoga instructor Aditi Shah to answer some of the most common questions about yoga for beginners. Let’s unroll the mat—here’s everything you need to know about yoga as a beginner.

What Is Yoga?

While it might seem like the main objective of yoga is to improve flexibility—after all, many poses involve getting flex-y—that only scratches the surface (and in fact, yoga is quite different from stretching). What truly sets yoga apart from other workouts is its emphasis on the mind-body connection, which leads to incredible physical and mental health benefits, from strength to stress relief.

“Yoga is inclusive of everybody,” Aditi says. “It has something to offer everyone, no matter how different we are.” From marathon runners to everyday athletes to pregnant people, yoga is for every person.

Depending on what type of yoga you try, most classes include a mixture of poses designed to improve mobility, flexibility, and strength. This, combined with the intrinsic link between body and mind, makes yoga unique in both its practice and its benefits and explains why it has been around for over five thousand years.

Different Types of Yoga for Beginners

There are certain classes or types of yoga that may be better than others for someone who is just getting started, and you can explore beginner-friendly yoga classes on the Peloton App. Here’s a quick overview of common types of yoga.

For beginners specifically, slow flow classes are an excellent way to learn new postures and focus on alignment, so you can get used to the way poses feel in your body. Restorative classes are also approachable and accessible, as many of them take place entirely on the ground (yup, you can technically do a workout while lying flat on your back). 

Yoga Breathing

One other important point that will most likely come up for beginners is how to breathe during yoga. Breath is a huge part of yoga and will likely be highlighted throughout your practice. The yoga flow is meant to be very fluid, and designed for your movements to follow your inhales and exhales. You’ll notice that as you move through poses, your instructor might start calling out when to breathe and how to breathe, so that your flow is smooth and you’re making the most of your movements. 

While certain types of yoga might place a heavier emphasis on breathwork and how to breathe than others (like Vinyasa), a general rule of thumb is to time your inhales to be as long as your exhales. 

Try practicing it now: Inhale deeply through your nose for 4 counts, allowing your chest and your stomach to slowly expand as your lungs fill up. Hold for a moment, and then exhale for 4 counts, drawing your stomach in while pushing the air out through your mouth. This focus on breathing will help you access your mind and draw your attention to your body. Coordinating your inhales and exhales with your movements will allow for more fluidity and grace during your flow. 

The Benefits of Yoga

Developing a yoga practice can help strengthen your muscles, improve posture, improve brain mental health, and more. These are just a few of the most impactful benefits of yoga: 

Minimize Your Stress

Research has shown that many of today’s most common diseases—from high blood pressure to chronic pain—are related to stress. Yoga’s focus on mindfulness and relaxation can help you reduce the negative effects of stress, and evidence shows that both higher levels of mindfulness and mindfulness training are associated with better psychological well-being, coping, and quality of life.

Increase Your Flexibility

Yoga places a heavy emphasis on flowing through postures that will stretch and elongate your muscles and connective tissues while you move and lubricate your joints. With regular practice, this can lead to an increase in your body’s range of motion. Studies have consistently shown that better flexibility decreases the body’s risk of injury, increases blood flow to muscles, and improves the body’s ability to complete daily activities. 

Strengthen Your Body

While you might not think of yoga as a strength workout, yoga does make you stronger. Yoga poses, while low impact, use your body weight as resistance, which can challenge and strengthen muscles. And it's not just the more challenging power yoga classes that help build strength. 

During many yoga poses, you’ll hold your full weight and support yourself with your arms, legs, and core, which helps target and build your muscles. While you may not be isolating a single muscle group like you would in traditional weight lifting, many yoga poses can build muscle mass across multiple areas of your body at the same time. 

What’s more, since many poses require flexibility and spine integrity, yoga is particularly useful for strengthening the core and back muscles. You’ll find pretty quickly that some of the more challenging balance poses require focusing on your abdominal muscles and overall form to help reinforce the torso and build core strength.

As you move through your yoga flow, you’ll also work your arms, legs, and glutes, with some poses even targeting smaller, more stabilizing muscles around the wrists and ankles. 

Keep in mind, repetition and longevity will be key. The longer you hold certain poses, the more you’ll start to feel the burn, so lean into it and keep your form aligned. And as with anything, consistency and commitment are vital to your overall comfort and ability. In other words, you’ll get better the more you pull out the mat and get into Downward-Facing Dog!

Already have a strength routine? Yoga is an excellent option for cross-training. You can create a yoga-focused workout routine with a mixture of yoga, strength training, and cardio (like rowing or running). 

Improve Your Posture and Balance

During your yoga flow, you will be relying on your core muscles to help you hold and maintain the majority of your seated and standing poses. There’s also a heavy focus on lengthening and elongating through the neck and spine and releasing the lower back. Research has even shown that because of this, yoga exercises can have a beneficial effect on the curves of the spine and may be an efficient training method for shaping proper posture in adults. In addition, the heavy emphasis on grounding and centering allows for better balance with a strengthened core.

Improve Your Brain Function and Cognitive Skills 

Yoga isn’t just good for your body, it’s also good for your brain. In recent years, science has paid more attention to the effects of yoga on the brain. Research reveals promising early evidence that a regular yoga practice can positively impact brain health, and behavioral interventions like yoga may hold promise to slow down age-related and neurodegenerative declines.

Boost Metabolism

Any sort of consistent activity, particularly a fitness activity, is going to help your body burn calories. How many calories burned during yoga will depend on the type of yoga. According to the 2011 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities, a 150-lb person would burn around 89 calories doing 30 minutes of Hatha yoga. Meanwhile, that same person would burn about 143 calories in a 30-minute power yoga session.

But the beauty of yoga is that there is less focus on burning calories and much more on the body feeling good through healthy and intentional movement. It’s important to find reasons and goals for any fitness activity that transcend weight loss, in order for it to become a sustainable part of your long-term success. 

Benefit Your Heart Health

Going hand-in-hand with lowering stress levels, studies show yoga to be a significant heart health booster. The movement and breathing techniques that comprise yoga flows have been found to lower blood pressure, blood cholesterol, blood glucose levels, and heart rate.

Deepen Your Sleep 

Yoga takes this positive effect of exercise one step further by helping your mind and body to actually relax. The focus on breathing, quieting the mind, and stretching the body to alleviate stress and tension sets the groundwork for a good night’s sleep and better sleeping habits in the long run. (Not convinced? Give these bedtime yoga poses a try.) Certain types of yoga classes are better to try closer to bedtime than others, like restorative yoga or any type of yoga that’s more meditative and breathing-based. 

What You Need for Yoga

The beauty of yoga for beginners is that, technically, you don’t need much (if any) specialized fitness equipment. If you’ve got floor space, you can flow with the best of them. But if you have a little extra space in your home gym (or the corner of your living room where you work out, no judgment), there are a few basic tools that can make your flow a little more comfortable. 

The most fundamental piece of equipment for yoga? A yoga mat, of course. If you already have an exercise mat that you can lay out for a little extra cushioning and a better grip, you’re set. Otherwise, we’d recommend investing in a mat that’s at least 5mm thick and 70” long (longer, if you’re tall). Look for a mat that has a good grip under your toes; this feature will help you stay grounded during tricky balance poses.

Beyond a mat, you might want to consider having a block or a strap on hand, in case you need to modify some of the poses. In yoga, the use of props is not seen as a weakness; even the most experienced yogis rely on props to help them deepen into certain poses or improve alignment in a posture. If you don’t have any props, consider keeping a blanket or pillow nearby if needed; a set of thick books can also work as blocks in a pinch.

What to Wear for Yoga

During your practice you want your attention to be on how your body is moving, not how your clothes fit or feel. Take some time to find clothing that allows for movement but isn’t too loose or baggy. It’s all about feeling comfortable enough to move freely and confidently. And skip the shoes and socks—yoga is better when practiced in bare feet. 

What to Expect During Your First Yoga Class

Congratulations, you’ve made it to your first yoga for beginners class! There are a few things you should know before stepping foot into the studio—IRL or virtual—that will help you feel cool, calm, and collected during class. 

Yoga Class Structure

Each yoga class varies by yoga type, teacher, and studio, but there are a few things you can count on for consistency. You’ll always start with a warm-up that’s designed to get your body gently moving and gradually add heat to your core. Your warm-up may include a series of sun salutations. A sun salutation is a set sequence of common yoga poses (including Mountain Pose, Downward-Facing Dog, and Chaturanga), and the series is foundational to both Vinyasa and Hatha yoga practices.

After your warm-up, you’ll get into the meat of class. Again, this differs depending on class type; Vinyasa classes will practice a specific sequence repeatedly, while yin yoga is less about the flow and more about holding poses for longer stretches of time. 

Finally, you’ll finish with floor work that often emphasizes the core. You’ll end by settling into Savasana, also known as Corpse Pose, in which you lie quietly for a few minutes of restoration before re-entering the world around you.

Yoga Poses for Beginners

Chances are, you’ve probably already done a few yoga poses in your life without even realizing it. If you’ve ever sat on the ground with the soles of your feet together, or bent over to touch your toes, or stood on one leg, congratulations—you’ve done yoga. 

But once you actively decide to take up yoga, you’ll need to learn almost an entirely new language of poses (or asanas) and how your physical positioning corresponds to each one. Over time, you’ll notice that some yoga poses for beginners pop up time and time again. Here’s an overview of the most common yoga poses for beginners—click through each link for a more detailed breakdown.

How Yoga for Beginners Should Feel

Part of the joy in yoga is in the practice—the gradual sense of improvement and mastery you achieve from consistently hitting up your classes. So, as much as we wish we could tell you otherwise, it’s not realistic for beginners to yoga to immediately nail Crow Pose, handstands, and more. Heck, you might not even be able to touch your toes at first, and that’s totally fine. Take your flow slow, and practice pushing your body right to its “edge” of comfort—but not beyond.

If at any time during your flow a pose causes pain or feels too difficult, you can always stop and rest or take a variation or modification of the pose as offered by your instructor. This is where your props can come in handy.

And if it feels awkward? Welcome to the club! Every yoga practitioner has felt that way at one time or another. Don’t allow yourself to feel intimidated and don’t compare yourself to whatever idea you may have as to what makes a “good” yoga practitioner. “Focus on how it feels, not how it looks,” Aditi says. “Give yourself space to grow. And most importantly, don’t judge your practice!”

Everyone was a beginner at one point, and most people go through phases where their bodies change or react to certain poses differently. Allow your practice to feel fluid, and focus on the journey and how incredible you’ll feel at the end of your flow, rather than how awkward or stiff your body may (or may not!) feel at first.

Making Yoga Part of Your Routine

Like most things in life, you’ll see the most benefits from yoga when you make it a part of your regular workout routine. Here’s some nitty-gritty advice on how to do just that. 

How Often Should You Do Yoga?

Aditi says there’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to how often yoga for beginners should be practiced—it ultimately depends on your body and your goals. If you practice once a week, you’ll feel the positive effects; if you practice it every day, you’ll feel them even more. As with all fitness routines, the more you practice, the faster you will start experiencing the benefits of yoga for yourself. Since the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends 2.5 hours of moderate aerobic activity a week, you might use that as your starting point, and increase it from there if you’re enjoying it and experiencing positive changes to both your body and mind. 

When Should You Do Yoga? 

The best time to do yoga, as with all forms of exercise, is whenever you know it will work realistically within your schedule. But practicing yoga at a certain time of day may help you achieve any specific benefits you seek.

Morning Yoga Practice

A morning yoga practice will set the tone for your day, and may be easier to accomplish when the rest of your daily commitments and to-do lists don’t have the chance to get in the way. 

Aditi prefers to practice yoga first thing in the morning, saying it gives her the opportunity to start her day with intention. There’s something highly motivating about choosing to begin your day with a relaxed mind and an energized body, moving through your yoga flow with purpose and positivity. 

Evening Yoga Practice

But, what if you’re not a morning person? For some people, a morning yoga flow is just not realistic. If that’s you, aim for an afternoon or an evening flow. There’s something to be said for wrapping up your day—whether it was good, bad, or just OK—with a grounding and relaxing yoga routine. And the good news is there are bedtime yoga poses specifically designed to help your body and mind prepare for rest. Just remember that yoga is deeply effective and worth the effort no matter what time of day you practice it. 

Finding Motivation for Yoga

So how can someone get into the habit of practicing yoga and what’s the best way to stay motivated? Well, it’s important to find your why—your reason for wanting to start in the first place. Refer to yoga’s list of benefits and find one or a combination of several that inspire you to develop a habit that will stick. Write down your own why, so you can refer to it on the days you don’t feel like rolling out your mat. 

Research has shown that once a good habit is developed, performing it on a regular basis becomes almost effortless. However, the time it takes to form a good habit varies; for some it can happen in under three weeks, while others need as much as half a year. So, do whatever it takes to allow your newly desired yoga habit to take hold and turn into something that will last. Create a sustainable and realistic routine for the days you want to practice, schedule your classes through the Peloton App, block out the time on your weekly calendar, and honor your commitment to yourself and your health.

Ready to flow it out? Even if you’ve never done a Downward-Facing Dog in your life, yoga can be immensely beneficial to your mental and physical health. Whether you prefer a slow yin yoga practice or a challenging Vinyasa that has your heart pumping, your yoga journey will help you minimize stress, improve your strength and flexibility, and straighten out your posture, among other things. By incorporating yoga poses for beginners into your workout routine once a week—or more—you’ll be investing in yourself, both body and mind. 

And remember that yoga isn’t just about what happens during your practice. “Yoga helps us to develop ourselves and our strength from the inside out,” Aditi says. “When we practice, we look for where ease and effort meet. Some of us need more ease, and some of us need more effort. When we learn to be easeful or when we take a risk and dip one toe over our edge, we get to take that learning off of the mat.”