Welcome to your first encounter with yoga!
We recommend complete beginners start with Esther Ekhart’s Yoga for Beginners course. This will teach you the foundational poses found in most styles of yoga.
Yoga is taught in many different ways, so try out a few different styles and teachers to find one that suits you. Take a look at our Styles pages to learn more about what to expect from some different styles.
The first thing you should know is that you should never do anything that hurts. Yoga should make you feel great. Yoga will relax and re-energize you, and it will make you stronger and more flexible. Of course, you are going to exercise your body, so you will feel your muscles stretching and strengthening, but that generally feels like a good sensation – the ache of exertion, not the warning pain of injury.
If you feel pain, ease off. Either the pose you are practicing isn’t right for you right now or there could be something wrong with the alignment of your body. Either way, when your body tells you to stop, listen to it.