It’s a new year, and while making resolutions can be a great motivator to utilize this energy and create big shifts; it’s easy to fall off the yoga bandwagon. I want to give you seven practical strategies to find a practice that you can rely on. Let’s talk about the importance of not just lowering but evolving expectations, embracing consistency over perfection, and finding personal anchor practices.
Listen and find out why you should…
🔹Evolve your expectations for what yoga practice looks like.
🔹Start with pleasurable experiences to engage with your practice.
🔹Have ready-to-go classes to eliminate decision fatigue.
📝 Download the Yoga For Self Mastery Syllabus => https://www.brettlarkin.com/yoga-for-self-mastery/
💗Get my book Yoga Life: Habits, Poses and and Breathwork to Channel Joy Amidst the Chaos => https://brettlarkin.com/yoga-life-book
FREE Practice: Beginner Gentle Yoga for Flexibility That You Can Do Anytime
Relevant Blog: Yoga To Connect With Your Body For Mind-Body Harmony
Relevant to Today’s Episode:
🐍 Yoga for Self Mastery
💖 Uplifted Membership
📖 Yoga Life Book
FREE PRACTICE:
🎧 Also Listen to:
#264 – How is Kundalini Yoga Different from Hatha/Vinyasa Yoga?
#279 – Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Summary – BOOK ONE Explained
#282 – Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Summary – BOOK TWO Explained
#318 – What Is Somatic Yoga?
© 2025 Uplifted Yoga | BrettLarkin.com
FREE Chakra Balancing Audio Track + Journaling Prompts
Transcript:
Brett:
Hello, Uplifted Yoga family and happy new year. If you’re listening to this in real time, it is so easy to make resolutions and then fall off the yoga bandwagon. It’s so easy to fall off track with your yoga routines. And so in this episode today, I’m gonna be sharing actionable tips to help you build a consistent yoga practice that lasts all year long. So I want you to use these seven practical strategies that I’m gonna go over one by one to ensure your practice not only becomes sustainable, but something that really enriches your life and that feels pleasurable. So it’s something that you crave.
Before we get into the episode and I divulge the seven tips, I want to remind you of a couple key things. One, is that the uplifted membership is on crazy sale right now for New Year’s. You can get a one year all access pass to all my yoga alliance continuing edu-
You can get a one year all access pass to all my best courses, thematic training plans and yoga alliance continuing education courses inside the uplifted membership for it’s like a crazy discount. And there’s bonus bundles that ship with my abundance journal so you can track your progress with my physical journal.
as you move through the year. And second of all, I really want you to download and just glance at the syllabus and
video curriculum for my Yoga for Self Mastery Course. This is gonna go on mega sale later this month. And it’s a course that’s often a little tricky for people to understand. It’s about living your yoga. And I think one of the best ways to kind of see and learn what that course is about.
is to go download the syllabus. And when you do, I will send you a couple really value-packed emails about
each of the skills in the course. So I’ll send you a really comprehensive overview of how I live Svadhyaya, which is what I translate as self-care, tapas, this idea of doing difficult things even when we don’t want to, and a really comprehensive overview of Ishvara Pranidhana, relinquishing control.
Each email is like a little mini guide on how to embody each concept, but you can’t get the emails unless you go download the syllabus. So I know you’re potentially interested in living your yoga.
So go to brettlarkin.com/ysm
Yep, the letters Y, S, and That stands for yoga for self mastery.
to not only see the syllabus, but get these guides that I’m gonna be sending starting in a couple days.
As a reminder, I am always linking up everything I mention in the show notes as well as free videos and blog posts that help you take everything we’re talking about on the podcast deeper.
And I would love for you to send me a DM and let me know what you most want to see on the podcast this year. I know for one, I’m going to be making a couple more episodes about the Yoga Sutras and summarizing books three and four, which are really hard. So I’m excited about that. You guys loved the book summaries I did for Pada 1 and Pada 2 of the Yoga Sutras. So if you’re new here, those are some of the really popular episodes that you might want to go check out.
And I will be continuing. I’m also going to be diving into the Bug of a Gita this year on the podcast as well as continuing to bring on really great guests, I think, and talking about what it takes to be a healer, leader, entrepreneur, and yoga teacher who’s also business savvy as we move into this new year.
Now, without further ado, let’s jump into my seven tips so you can create and cultivate a yoga practice that sticks this year.
Tip number one, and I know you’re gonna laugh, but is actually to lower your expectations. Yes, lower your expectations. Let go of the idea that your yoga practice must be an hour long and in your yoga room or yoga space.
with you wearing yoga clothes. I talk so much about this in my book, Yoga Life, which hopefully you own. And if you don’t go get it, it’ll completely transform the way you practice. Yoga life, habits, breath work.
Yoga Life Habits, Poses, and Breathwork to Channel Joy Amidst the Chaos. It’s available everywhere books are sold. One of the main things I talk about in that book is that we’re given all these messages from movies and
society that in order for something to be spiritual or be transformative or be meaningful, it needs to look that way. And I debunk this in the book really because my own personal experience has been that I have had some of my most earth shattering, know, enlightened moments when I was practicing in my pajamas with dirty laundry surrounding me.
So my invitation for you here is to commit to shorter practices that feel manageable even on your busiest days.
In the uplifted membership, have this really fun little training plan or challenge that you can do in there, which is five minutes of yoga for 10 days in a row.
I actually really loved filming those classes because it was so incredible to me how much I was actually able to fit into a five minute flow and how much even just five minutes of movement or breath work transforms and affects your energy.
So if you have this expectation that, you know, 30 minutes of yoga or an hour of yoga or sometimes even 20 minutes of yoga will happen every day, I’m going to invite you to just lower your expectations. And a lot of that has to do with expanding your definition of what yoga is. And that’s something else my book, Yoga Life, really talks about when we think of yoga is something that only happens on a mat and something that’s only physical.
like stretching and strengthening our body. That’s a very narrow view. So in the book, I talk about this thing called the yoga of awareness, which is the yoga we take off the mat and live through embodying the three skills I mentioned earlier, Svadyaya, Tapas and Ishvara Pranidhana, which are actually the skills that encompass Kriya yoga, yoga in action.
And you can practice those all day long in an argument with your spouse, when you’re driving your car.
So this first tip isn’t just about lowering your expectations. It’s actually also about like evolving your expectations of where and when yoga can happen. And we’ll keep talking about that as we go on here.
But this thought process that so many of us fall into, myself included, of like, well, you I don’t have that much time, so I’m not even going to bother, right? Or, ugh, I feel gross, or I look gross, I’m not wearing like a yoga, you know, type thing, so I’m just going to do nothing.
I guess I had here on the podcast last year, she talked about how she meditated in bed just the moment she woke up before she peed, brushed her teeth, did anything. She just sat upright in bed and did a little mini meditation to set the tone for her day. And it’s interesting because a couple of you actually reached out to me and said, they started, you started doing that and it was life changing. so there, you know, it’s like she had bad breath. She’s, know, hasn’t even really fully woken up or gotten ready yet, but she’s
slipping it in and it’s not looking the way you might think meditation is supposed to look, know, happening maybe much earlier at 5 a.m. or wearing white or chanting the Adi mantra or, you know, having this picture perfect meditation cushion in a light filled space.
But in a sec-
but it’s an example of how you can commit to something shorter, something that doesn’t fit the quote unquote ideal of what we think a practice should look like, but that’s actually much more manageable. And this leads into tip number two, which is to embrace consistency over perfection.
This is exactly what I was just talking about, about how perfectionism derails consistency because we use the fact that stuff isn’t perfect or our hair isn’t perfect or our clothes isn’t perfect as an excuse to not get on the mat at all or to not do any kind of breath work.
So you want to focus on those small daily or weekly wins.
If you sign up for Uplifted Year right now and get the Abundance Journal that ships with one of the bonus packages, there’s actually a place in that journal to check off your yoga, meditation, affirmations, and journaling each day. And I give you a little page that walks you through this. it’s really like the journaling space guys is like four sentences. So it’s very quick. It’s just kind of like a morning pages, like I’m thinking about. And then the affirmations I provide for you and you can copy them over, like write them again or not and then the yoga and meditation.
also be very simple like the meditation just sitting up in bed.
first thing in the morning, followed by yoga maybe later in the day. That’s the five minute plan.
So whether you get the Yoga Journal I offer where you just check mark these things off each day or make your own little checklist.
The goal is consistency over perfection. And in the Yoga for Self Mastery course, there’s also a daily tracker for doing the Svadyaya, Tapas, and Ishvary Pranidhana, really noticing how you’re practicing self care each day, how you’re relinquishing control, how you’re cultivating the opposite.
So it sounds simple, but embracing consistency over perfection and the consistency won’t happen unless you’re tracking it, folks. You got to track it. I took this incredible energy management course a couple of years ago and that course had a checklist and sort of a spreadsheet for very basic, like energetic self-care. Like I went to bed at my assigned bedtime. I drink water. I mean, these things were simple.
but because I had to check them off each day, it actually really changed the way I live my life.
Consistency will not be achieved if you’re not looking at some sort of tracker, whether that’s digital, paper, or on your phone.
While this may sound aggressive, it’s really like holding yourself accountable because if you’re listening to this podcast, it’s like we all know who we are and how we show up in our lives to parent others, to care for others when we do our yoga and meditation in order to feel centered ourselves. So it’s really keeping track and really keeping an inventory of the most important thing that could ever be happening.
Tip number three.
is to find your anchor practice. This is you identifying one go-to movement or breathing exercise that brings you back to center.
And then you make this practice your default whenever you’re feeling either uninspired or short on time.
It simplifies everything for your brain because the decision-making matrix that we usually have to go through of like what class to do or what breathing techniques should be, that just gets eliminated immediately. Those of you who’ve done a 40-day kriya know the beauty of this because it’s like you just know what you’re doing each day. So in anchor practices, you just identify one thing that whenever you’re stressed or whenever you’re like, I would love to fit some yoga or meditation in, you just do this one thing without even thinking about it. So for me right now,
That is the advanced pelvic floor breath. This is a pranayama where I am really focused, those of you who’ve done the Kundalini training on pushing my belly out as I breathe in, sending my pelvic floor down, and then exhaling, really slurping my pelvic floor up as I exhale.
I’m doing this breath all the time, like in uncomfortable Zoom meetings. just like, I’ll just start doing it in the car when I notice I’m stressed. Maybe I’m sitting in the car in my son’s school pickup line. Whoop, all of a sudden there goes belly pelvic floor. I just start doing it.
But for you, this could be anything. mean, maybe you’re very auditory and sound oriented. Your anchor practice could be the satanama, like just saying that to yourself or doing the finger movements, that breath meditation from the Kundalini tradition, Kirtan Kriya.
Another anchor practice I have and that I’ve used for years is the yin style forward fold, which those of you who’ve done that with me, you just literally fall like a limp puppet, limp into Pashimottanasana forward fold with your head hanging heavy, your chin into the chest. It’s kind of like you’re just a raggedy Ann doll that someone’s ploop plopped down. And that became like an anchor pose for me on the mat. Like if I wasn’t sure what to do or where to start, I would just, just lie in that.
yin style forward fold. was easy. It was soothing. It didn’t require me to do anything. It didn’t require me to think.
A weird way I describe these anchor practices is also kind of like a gateway drug, right? You do this breathing technique or this kind of yin pose and all of a sudden you start craving more yoga. So it kind of can be that gateway or that entry into a longer, deeper practice by just doing that one thing.
So pause the podcast right now. Maybe you’re driving. mean, think about like, what could the anchor practice be for you? Maybe you’re doing it right now. Maybe it’s a full, complete breath, you know, just inhaling, puffing the belly out, sending breath into the low back.
Or maybe it’s doing some gentle lateral side stretches, side bends. Or maybe it’s just falling into a butterfly stretch, you know, when you don’t feel like practicing, but you just want to get on your mat each day.
The hardest step is always step one. So if you just automatically know what step one is, it’s going to make it so much easier to do a lot of yoga. Tip number four is to make five minutes count. And kind of like the gateway drug idea, I mean, if you just start doing one thing, it’s really interesting. Your body just starts to crave more yoga. Often for me, this could look like a child’s pose or a cat cow. I come into a child’s pose. Maybe I do side bends, you know, like reaching the palms.
and the hands to the left side of the mat, then the right side of the mat. And then, ugh, it’s like, okay, now I’m craving some cat cow, or I start just doing some cat cow and then, I’m craving a down dog. So I pop into a down dog and you can just put together, you know, your own little five minute flow.
You’ve got to make the in-between moments count. That’s how you make five minutes count, is you take advantage of the in-between time where you’d be mindlessly scrolling your phone or not doing anything else. I talk about this a lot in the book. I have these things called yoga habits, which is an entire list and index that I compile for you at the end of the book on how I sneak yoga into all these different parts of my day, stretching while I’m watching TV, doing little palm hand exercises when I’m in Zoom meetings.
little mini meditations and breath work when I’m in the car. My best, most recent example of making five minutes count is a lot of times I’m cooking for my kids or cooking for my family and we have like an island in our kitchen. So I’m between the kitchen island and the stove top. Essentially it’s a very narrow corridor, but I just put my yoga mat there. So I might like boil water. I’m waiting for pasta to boil or something. And I just in that little narrow corridor between the oven and the kitchen island,
Do some low lunges or do some stretches or do some sun salutations or just pyramid pose.
I am literally making dinner, but getting a little bit of stretching in at the same time. Now, is this the ideal? No, but you really can fit your practice in every day if you find those in between moments and make five minutes count. Another example I give in the book is like when I’m waiting for my bath to fill. Usually when the bath water is running, I’m like running around, cleaning, going downstairs, hoping the second floor doesn’t flood. You can just keep a yoga mat in your bathroom like I do.
and use that time where you hear the water running to just fit in your little five minute practice then. And if you don’t know what to do, again, that five minute plan and the uplifted membership will be very, very helpful to you.
Tip number five is to create a supportive environment. So you’re gonna create a clutter-free, inviting space with all your props, but then you’re not gonna be attached to using it. I think the most supportive thing you can do in terms of environment is stashing yoga mats in every room of the house. I have them stashed everywhere. And then having what I call a yoga basket. I also write about this in the book.
and detail. There’s a video you can watch as well where I show you everything that’s in my yoga basket. But the reason I love the basket is because you can put all your props in the basket and then you can carry the basket wherever you need to go. So for example, in the winter, I like practicing in front of my fireplace, assuming the house is quiet and empty. So I just grab my yoga basket. I already have a, you know,
yoga mat stashed in the living room, but I just bring my basket and I’m good to go. Sometimes the house is crazy and loud. I just grab that basket and go over into my bedroom where I also have a yoga mat.
This basket is like my Mary Poppins bag for me to reset myself, right? So I have an eye mask in there, an eye pillow. I have some essential oils. I have some lip chap because my lips always get very dry when I do a lot of crazy pranayam. I have a little blanket.
I throw my blocks in there. That’s why I love foam blocks, because they’re lightweight, easy to take around the house.
So yes, absolutely have a dedicated yoga space. That’s a beautiful idea, but don’t feel like you always have to practice there. I love practicing in patches of sunlight. So this is another reason I love the basket. Cause when there’s patches of sunlight throughout the house that appear in random areas, I can just zoom into them and take advantage of them and practice like a little cat in the sun.
You can have the most beautiful yoga room in entire world, but if you never use it or never make time to go in there…
It doesn’t matter. So that’s why the supportive environment for me is having yoga mats everywhere also that I can see. Because when you see the mat or have to walk over the mat, I don’t recommend rolling up your mats like the one by my fireplace. I just keep it there. I keep it out there. And sometimes my kids are playing on it or people step on it, but it’s there. It’s like a visual reminder that it’s, you know, I should be practicing. It’s easy for me to practice.
I want you to pause the podcast right now and think about for you, like, what could you put in your basket, your yoga basket that is supportive for you? Like, what essential oil or hand cream or…
scent or mala beads or little props would you put in your basket so that you could take it wherever you need it in your home?
and be able to really deeply nourish yourself.
One of my favorite hacks for winter is to use a heated blanket. So when I don’t feel like practicing, I lie down, just take Shavasana with a heated blanket and get on my mat. Or I do a yin pose with a heated blanket. So it really just feels like a nap or rest.
And this moves us perfectly into tip number six, which is start with pleasure. Start with something pleasurable. think everyone’s read the Atomic Habit books, Atomic Habit. We know the SID of like habit stacking, right? So if there’s something pleasurable, like for me, heat is pleasurable, like that heated blanket. Doing something with the heated blanket, even if it’s just lying down, I’m getting on my mat to lie down. Notice I’m not doing it in my bed. I’m doing it on my mat. So.
putting pleasure first, which is also one of the key principles of Yoga for Self-Mastery in that course, which seems like why would we need to learn that? But we do, because most of us have really forgotten how to have fun, how to have frivolous fun.
how to really be in a state of pranic reserves where we have a lot of not just energy, but energy that’s unique to us.
But pleasure is a generative energy. So if you can have a scent in that, you know, yoga basket, that’s pleasurable and you, you know, smell that scent and then you maybe just do a child’s pose or you just do constructive rest lying down on your back. I do that all the time. Or you do just stonehenge, right? Legs up. So great to just put the legs up, have the legs elevated. I just put two blocks in a yoga bolster. My legs are at a 45 degree incline and lie down.
the right scent or heated blanket, like all of a sudden this becomes a pleasurable experience. So doesn’t feel like yoga is one more to do, like something I have to be doing. Instead, I’m just nourishing myself. This is what we call svadhyaya in Yoga for Self-Mastery, and I’ll send you whole email about it if you go and get on the email list.
So if you’re resisting your practice, just keep honing in like a beacon, like what would be pleasurable? What would be pleasurable? Would it be a Sufi grind? Would it be a restorative forward fold? Do I just want to do pigeon? Do I just want to lie on the foam roller with my arms in a T shape? That’s something else I do all the time. Would it be more pleasurable if I were by the fireplace? Great, no problem. I have my yoga basket. I can go by the fireplace. Would it be more pleasurable?
if I did it with certain music.
I’ve had students tell me that they do some of my classes listening to Taylor Swift or listening to harp music or listening to biannual beats.
Get creative about making your practice pleasurable. Most of us are so lazy and we never do this. We’re always thinking in terms of complaints as opposed to desires, which there’s an entire section in the Yoga for Self Mastery Manual that like teaches you how to shift from complaints to desires.
from victim martyr mindset into pleasure. So just remember a pleasure first.
And in my Yoga Life book, there’s all these quizzes in there that help you figure out your soulmate poses. Literally, like this whole book is just designed to like help you figure out what kind of practice is going to be the most pleasurable for you based on your Ayurvedic type, based on your personality, based on your goals. And I take you there step by step with quizzes. So if you haven’t done that yet in the book, I highly recommend it.
And then my last tip, tip number seven is just to have ready to go classes because sometimes the hardest part is deciding what kind of practice to do and that’s what stops us. So I would create, I believe I’ve talked about this before, your three default practices. We already talked about an anchor practice. That’s just something you can do anywhere out in the world that helps reground you.
But the three default practices are one practice that is just very soothing and easy for you. Like think about the kind of thing you do on the first day of your period or when you’re exhausted or when you didn’t sleep well, right? Picking a class in the uplifted membership or somewhere out in the world, wherever who you practice with and just that class being like your go-to for when you’re really struggling and low on energy. It’s like a class that babies you.
So that would be your first default practice. Your second default practice would be a class that challenges you a little bit, but not too much. Like it’s.
It’s comfortable. It’s not taking you out of your comfort zone.
but it’s a little more high energy or more movement than the class that’s just like totally babying you. Maybe it’s a little bit longer as well. And then the third practice would be one that really pushes your buttons. For me, it’s like the Kundalini Grea that always makes me feel angry or kind of brings out my own internal stuff. And that one you want to do one day is you feel strong, right? This is the reality. Some days we feel strong, some days we don’t.
So when you have three default practices, know, one for the days when you don’t sleep well, one that kind of meets you on an average day and the other that’s like, yeah, I slept like nine hours and my kids are gone and I have nothing to do for the next, you know, I don’t have to work for the next couple of hours or the house is clean through some miracle. Like I’m going to get it. I’m going to go to the yoga gym and take it to the extreme and really work and maybe poke, poke and provoke myself a little bit.
for the process of my own evolution, almost as like a purifying practice.
And that could look different for everyone. Again, this is why if you haven’t read my yoga life book, like do it because for some people that, that practice that pokes and provokes you might be a yin practice. If you’re a really type A go getter that, that might be really challenging for you. Or it might look like a really challenging Kundalini Kriya, or it might look like chanting and a lot of vocal activation work. If that’s out of your comfort zone.
So easy, medium, and hard is like the overly simplistic way to look at these things.
These should be incredibly tailored to you, to your personality.
Another really great benefit of being an uplifted member, and it’s the best time of year to join, is that we have a weekly schedule for you. So if you just go into the app, there is always a ready to go class right there up top assigned for the day. And how a lot of members have told me they use this is maybe they don’t have time for a 35 minute class on Tuesday, but they might scroll forward and do Thursday’s class, which is 10 minutes on Tuesday.
And they kind of swap it around and we always have a meditation of the week as well. So it just takes all the decision making out of the process. And then of course, those of you that want to go on more thematic challenges, like exploring the chakras. you know, we have a 30 day plan for each chakra. We have the chakra challenge. have exploring the energy of Kali or Lakshmi or doing a Yoganidra deep dive. So there’s these challenges where
There’s PDF books where you can check mark off each class and there’s journaling prompts.
So moving through something like a dedicated weekly plan or a challenge can also just be such a great way.
to eliminate decision fatigue. So to recap, our tips were to number one, lower your expectations and change your expectation of what yoga is and what it looks like. Number two, to embrace consistency over perfection. Number three, to find your anchor practice. Do you have some ideas of what this could be? Think about it, think about it. Number four, make five minutes count.
Again, just visualize me literally doing yoga between my kitchen island and oven. And actually practicing next to the oven’s kind of nice because it warmed me up a little bit. And using the kitchen counters for support in a high lunge or a twist, also really fun. So again, make your environment work for you, which is tip number five. Create a supportive environment that’s also portable, meaning that yoga basket that you can move around.
Tip number six was pleasure first.
Maybe you put on a really delicious hand cream or cuticle cream. love cuticle cream. Maybe that’s kind of how you start and then you sit and then you meditate and you’re also smelling it, right? Like the more that you can figure out how to make your time on the map pleasurable.
the less resistance you will feel to getting on your mat. And tip number seven, last but not least, was to have a plan, have ready to go classes, whether that’s through my app, the Uplifted app, a different program, or by having those three default practices.
My three default practices have grown out of doing 40 day creas. like I’ll do, and there’s a 40 day crea program, of course, in the membership. But if you do a 40 day crea, that class usually becomes like part of your soul. And so there are 40 day creas that I’ve done in the past. And one is, you know, kind of babies me. One is a little bit challenging and the other really challenges me. And so those, you know, past 40 day experiences are now kind of.
what I use as my default practices, when I’m not sure what else to practice.
Thank you so much for being here and listening all the way to the very end. If you are new here or maybe just wanting to get the most out of the podcast. There are some great episodes from last year to check out. How is Kundalini Yoga different from Hatha Vinyasa Yoga? That was a super popular episode.
As was the Yoga Sutras Book 1 Summary.
What is somatic yoga was also a really popular recent upload.
So if you missed any of those…
I’ll link them up in the show notes so can check them out.
I’m so excited about the podcast content I have planned for this year.
And if you are not in the Uplifted app, this is a perfect moment to join. So check that out in the show notes, make sure you’re on my email list or get the Yoga for Self-Mastery syllabus. You can get these really.
value packed emails that I’m going to send specifically about Svaryaya, Tapas and Svaripranidana over the next couple of days with literal like step by steps on how to do and embody these skills as well. Each one also has like a little story from either my own life or a student’s life.
I hope to see you in your inbox or on the mat if you are here till the very end. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you being.
Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for being part of the community.Don’t forget to practice self care and get on your mat today. I’m sending you so much love. Namaste.
