As I continue on my journey into a more mindful way of living, I have decided I want to include yoga into my daily life. In this article, I will share with you some of my favourite free yoga resources for beginners. They are in no particular order and a chop and change depending on how I’m feeling on the day.
Yoga with Adriene
Adriene is probably one of my favourite online yogis to follow (and well over 2 million people on her YouTube Channel seem to agree with me!). Not only is her content available on YouTube, and therefore free of watch, she’s so down to earth and easy to follow! Though she still uses yoga terms, she mixes in non-yogi language for all of us newbies out there. She happily makes little jokes and puns throughout the session which I really like; sometimes I just need a more casual yoga session. There is a lot of content available for beginners and she has an entire Foundations of Yoga series which is a great place to start for different poses and techniques. She has created playlists under a number of different themes so you can always pics something for how you’re feeling (e.g. yoga for healing and meditation, yoga for six pack abs, and easy breeze beautiful yoga). Or if you want a program to follow, she has created a 30 Days of Yoga series which included videos of different lengths and different themes. Yoga with Adriene is great for anyone, whether you might be someone who needs to stick to something day to day, or if you just want to see how you feel when you get up in the morning.
Fightmaster Yoga
Some days I can’t bare to watch videos of the super-fit, super-thin yoga girls (maybe I had an extra slice of cake last night), so it’s nice to see someone with a strong, but more “average” body shape. The Fightmaster Yoga channel is a great library of yoga videos across a variety of themes. There is everything from yoga for flexibility and stretching, gentle yoga and meditation, to more advanced moves like headstands and inversions. A great place to start is with her 30 Minute Yoga for Beginners 30 Day Challenge. I really like how she has filmed the whole session and then has edited the commentary over the top, I feel like you can focus on her movements better when she’s not also talking at the same time. This is mainly for this beginner series; in many of her other videos she talks you through the poses as she does them. She also has a great number of tutorial videos about how to get in and out of poses correctly and safely.
DoYogaWithMe
DoYogaWithMe is a fantastic online library of free yoga classes, challenges, programs, and pose tutorials. There is a section dedicated to beginners and hundreds of videos to choose from. There are a variety of different instructors so if you don’t listening to one of them, you can always try another instructor. You can browse through the plethora of free videos available, or if you need more structure, you can follow along with one of the 30 Day Yoga Challenges. Or you can follow one of the programs which also combines meditation into your practice. Almost all of the content on the site is available for free, but you can pay to access additional content and the ads will also be removed. You can skip straight to all of the beginner content, or you can search through all of the classes and filter by difficulty, class duration, style, or instructor. I just access this from the browser on my iPhone and it works just as well as the classes on YouTube.
FitStar Yoga App by Fitbit
This is another well produced app, both with free and PRO content. The instructor in the videos can sometimes be a bit intimidating; one of them is incredibly thin/fit. This could be seen as an inspiration to some, or disheartening for others; please judge how you feel for yourself. The app gives you the option to say whether or not you thought the pose was too easy or too difficult which you can then review at the end of your session. It doesn’t appear to save these notes for the next time you do the session though which is a bit unfortunately (at least I haven’t discovered how to do yet). There are nice long sessions in this app, but not many short ones.
fitstar.com/yoga | Download the app on itunes here.
Daily Yoga App
As always, this app contains a mix of free and PRO content. There are a couple of free programs available which give you a different workout for every day for 10 or 12 days. You can also choose from a number of different targeted sessions such as Spinal Movement, Core Builder, and Yoga for Moms. It also contains some guided meditation within the app if you are also looking to try to add meditation to your daily practice as well.
dailyyoga.com | Download the app on itunes here.
Asana Rebel App
There isn’t a very much free content, but what is available has been done very well done. The app is very nice to use, and doesn’t seem to be as buggy as some of the other free yoga apps. If you are someone who doesn’t necessarily need a huge variety but wants to follow high quality, and well produced videos – then this may be a great starting point to try out.
