by Anna Cook
As a Yoga instructor of course I prefer that my students come to class and pay me hourly for their instruction, it’s a business after all. However, for those who can’t get to class, wish to save money by doing yoga at home, or prefer attempting the poses in the comfort of their own home before heading to a studio to do headstands with a bunch of veteran yogis, technology is here to help!
Not only are there some fabulous smart phone apps available that will guide you lovingly through your first sequence. Doing yoga in your home will save you a lot of money—while you work up both the strength and confidence to master the basic yoga poses. This way, once you’re comfortable, you might wish to invest in a series of classes at a studio or a gym.
Here are five free and relatively inexpensive yoga apps for your smart phone…
1. Prêt-à-Yoga Lite (Free – for iPhone & iPad)
If you’re too shy to just go out and join a yoga class, you can learn the basic yoga poses safely and alone in your own home thanks to the Prêt-à-Yoga Lite smart phone app.
Not only is this instructional yoga app completely free; it offers a uniquely crafted yoga experience designed to enlighten those who’ve let their practice slip and guide those who are new to the practice of yoga in general.
A gentle practice led by the personal expertise of yogi and exercise physiologist, Kathleen Kastner, who will guide you through each sequence, pose by pose, giving safe instruction for the mechanics and muscles used in each yoga anasa (or pose) and even guide you through effective breathing techniques for each.
This app will guide you through the basics of an Ashtanga (or power yoga) practice, beginning with Pranayama (or breathing techniques), Sun Salutation A, Sun Salutation B, and ending with a beginner’s yoga sequence that you can do in your own home backed by the otherworldly music of Cerebral Songs.
2. Yoga Free (Free – for iPhone & iPad)
This summer, I took a month off for myself and retreated to my family cottage, relaxed in a hammock, ran through the sprinkler in the front yard, and had campfires. There is a beautiful beach nearby and every morning I took the opportunity to run to the shore and struck a few yoga poses from the Yoga Free app on the sand. Talk about bliss!
This app offers over 250 yoga classes and guided postures in a user friendly format. On top of your mat (or sand) practice, this tool also offers a handy calendar to keep track of your daily practice, inspiring daily yoga quotes, as well as a collection of soothing videos and music that you can practice to or use for your meditation.
Once you’re comfortable with the basic poses, you can use the app to create your very own yoga practice and adjust the duration and difficulty of poses as you progress.
3. Daily Yoga (Free – for Android)
The Daily Yoga app is the official coaching app from Daily Yoga Inc. It’s like having your very own yoga instructor tucked inside that little pocket in your yoga pants.
It not only features live voice instructions and HD video to guide you safely through each yoga practice; it also features a wide array of blissed out yoga tunes, a social form where you can seek support and ask questions of other yogis, and the ability to select a class based on duration and difficulty to ensure you are constantly evolving your practice.
4. Pocket Yoga HD ($2.99 – for iPhone & iPad)
The Pocket Yoga HD app features a series of three practices, at 3 levels of difficulty, as well as 3 durations—for a total of 27 individual yoga classes.
Each class is accompanied by fully-illustrated examples of every pose (there are 145 poses in all), as well as a handy user log that you can tailor to your own yoga practice to track your progress as you learn and embrace new poses.
5. All In Yoga (Free – for Android)
The All In Yoga app really is “the full yoga experience”. This app offers more than 300 individual yoga poses with gently-guided text, photo instructions, and audio guidance from an experienced yogi like me, but it’s a dude!
Once you get the poses down, you can even create your own practice by choosing from the individual poses—each asana is grouped according to muscle group and level so you can target certain areas you want to work on (i.e., like the butt or abs).
Once you create your practice, you can easily edit it by dragging and dropping poses, changing the poses, or adding new ones.
(Anna Cook is a freelance writer who takes the same hands-on approach to her print and online articles as she does to her yoga practice and instruction. Anna, who writes for DIY Mother, is known for sharing her personal and often humorous fitness stories, good and bad, in the various print and online articles she writes. When she’s not writing or doing yoga, Anna can be found renovating her house, which is a never-ending project, or taking well deserved respite at her family cottage with her husband.)
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