What if i skip yoga

Let me let you in on a little secret. If you want to reap the benefits of this practice you have to make it a priority. The next time you feel too tired to practice, try this: Set a timer for five minutes and move, stretch, and breathe until it goes off. If you feel too tired to go on, stop, maybe lay over a bolster for a few minutes—you probably need the rest!

And that totally counts as your yoga practice, by the way! Most of the time, I get a boost of energy from just 5 minutes of movement and I go on to finish my practice.

My family needs me. When I adopted a puppy a little more than a year ago, my yoga practice really suffered. It brought up all these feelings I had never dealt with, and then all of a sudden, I had to lay there quietly and deal with it? No, thanks," he says. I highly, highly encourage students to challenge themselves and learn to lie in the stillness of Savasana. Still, both Rose and Zurcher know that telling students to never duck out early is somewhat unrealistic, and in the grand scheme of things, making it to your mat at all matters more.

If you have to miss out on Savasana, just make sure you do it without interrupting the rest of the class. Limit your extra stuff: water bottle , articles of clothing, towels; the less stuff you have, the easier it will be to leave. Third, position yourself by the exit. If that spot is taken, explain to your fellow yogis you unfortunately have to leave before Savasana today. Fourth, leave when the class is cooling down. In this instance, taking a break from yoga means skipping out on the benefits that health experts say even a gentle yoga practice, such as yin or Kripalu yoga can provide, which include better stress management and emotional health and the ability to better manage anxiety and depression via LiveStrong.

But stepping away from the mat doesn't necessarily mean you're giving up on the peripheral benefits of yoga altogether. Yoga is meant to teach you not just how to manage stress, but to establish a balance between the needs of mind, body, and soul.

So if you can still practice mindfulness, which is what yoga is really all about, it means you haven't completely stopped doing yoga at all. The physical price for stopping yoga Shutterstock. The hidden price of stopping yoga Shutterstock.