Aerial yoga provides a full body workout. It can help to build strength and flexibility. It can also help to improve your overall balance.
But unfortunately, even with all these benefits, some yogis may end up compromising their practice by developing undesirable aerial yoga habits.
And if you don’t break these habits or undesirable patterns, you may end up transferring them to your life.
Therefore, identifying these habits early and breaking them early will help to improve not only your antigravity yoga practice but your entire life in general.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the bad aerial yoga habits and patterns that you should break and how you can break them.
Comparing Yourself with Others
You may have probably heard that comparison is the thief of joy. When you start comparing yourself to others, you will find it extremely hard to progress in various aspects of life.
And the same case will apply to antigravity yoga.
For instance, if you are attending aerial yoga classes, you may notice that the person next to you is doing a certain pose with perfection – something that you’ve always struggled with.
When you do that, you may start pushing yourself too hard, trying to attain such levels of perfection. And unfortunately, you may end up injuring yourself, if your body has not yet adapted to such levels of training.
What you need to understand is that people have different capabilities. For instance, that person may be struggling to perfect the star pose, something that you may be doing with ease.
So, instead of comparing yourself to others, you should instead focus on your yoga swing practice. By focusing on your practice and putting in the effort, you will eventually get where you desire to be.
Overworking Your Body
Good, consistent aerial yoga habits will help you to be fit and strong, but you also need to be taking your time and enjoying your workouts.
Therefore, as much as you may want to learn and perfect a certain pose within a certain timeframe, you shouldn’t overwork your body.
As mentioned above, trying to push yourself too hard may lead to injuries. And when this happens, you may be forced to take some time off to recover, thus hampering your progress.
Also, the injury that you get may be serious to an extent that your entire life may be disrupted.
So, when it comes to yoga workouts at home, you should learn to listen to your body and train within your limits. If your body is telling you to stop, you should simply end the session and resume another day.
With this approach, you will avoid serious injuries and your yoga hammock workouts will be more enjoyable. And if you are enjoying your sessions, you will attain your milestones gradually.
Focusing on the End-Goal
Most motivational speakers will tell you that you should focus on the end goal. They will tell you that you should do everything possible to achieve the goals, objectives or ambitions that you’ve set for yourself.
While there’s nothing wrong with pursuing your goals and dreams, focusing too much on the end goal can be counterproductive.
When you only focus on the end goal, you will lose the value and the joy of the journey. Instead of focusing too much on the end goal, you should instead enjoy every small milestone that you accomplish along the way.
For instance, most aerial yoga hammock poses require several steps before you attain the final pose. And it can take several attempts before you nail the pose to perfection.
Therefore, instead of focusing too much on the result, you should celebrate whenever you manage to accomplish the different moves needed for the final pose.
When you do it this way, the journey will be enjoyable and you will even find yourself attaining your goal within a shorter period, compared to someone who spent the entire time worrying whether they are doing it right.
Using Your Phone During Practice
During your yoga workout at home, you may be tempted to check your phone in the middle of your practice.
For example, you may want to check your phone to see whether you have work-related emails or messages.
You may sometimes want to see whether a celebrity you follow has uploaded some new photos on social media.
While there’s nothing wrong with checking your phone, doing it in the middle of your practice is a bad habit. And this is one of the aerial yoga habits you need to break.
This time on your yoga swing should be an opportunity to unplug and refresh your mind.
Therefore, if you have a scheduled yoga swing session, you should keep your phone away as possible. It will also be advisable to put it on silent mode.
So, even if someone rings or you have a notification, you won’t be tempted to check it during your session.
Skipping Savasana
Some people may feel as if savasana is a waste of time and end up skipping it altogether. But the truth is, savasana is one of the most important flying yoga poses.
It’s as important as the star pose, downward-facing dog or any aerial yoga pose that you consider important to your practice.
Also known as the corpse pose, savasana is usually performed at the end of an aerial yoga hammock workout.
It entails lying on your back and focusing on your breathing. It allows your entire body to relax and become one.
So, when you leave before savasana, you are denying your body the opportunity to relax and recollect. Consequently, your practice may feel incomplete.
Hence, you need to be dedicating at least 5 to 10 minutes at the end of your workout for savasana. Also, you need to discipline yourself to be following this schedule.
Avoiding Doing Certain Poses
When it comes to aerial yoga, you may prefer doing certain poses instead of others. For instance, you may enjoy doing the anti-gravity warrior pose instead of the inverted bow pose.
For such reasons, you may be spending the majority of your practice time doing only the poses that you love while avoiding those that you don’t like.
And when you get used to doing this way, you may end up transferring this negative behavior in your life. For example, you may start skipping the meetings that you don’t like at work, leading to disciplinary proceedings.
The problem is, this approach will significantly hinder your progress. Therefore, you need to avoid the temptation of doing only the poses that you like. Instead, you should dedicate equal time to each of the different poses at your level.
Once you develop this discipline, you’ll find it easier to get out of your comfort zone in various situations.
Only Practicing When You Feel Like
Likewise, there are those days when you don’t feel like doing anything. You just want to laze around the house watching movies or sleeping. And if your practice session happens to fall on such a day, you may be tempted to skip the session.
Eventually, this may become a bad aerial yoga habit, where you will only workout whenever you feel like it. And if this continues, you may end up quitting the practice altogether, thus undoing all the work that you had done.
While it’s normal to feel like you don’t want to do anything on some days, don’t be tempted to skip your workout sessions. And if you have already fallen into this bad habit, you need to find a means of breaking it asap!
Arriving Late for Your Sessions
If you are running late for your aerial yoga workout, you should probably cancel it. After arriving, you will spend the next five or 10 minutes preparing and trying to calm yourself down.
Hence, by the time you begin your session, you will have already wasted around 30 minutes. And, there’s a high chance that you will struggle to work out effectively.
So, if you have a habit of arriving late for your yoga sessions, you need to break this habit. You need to discipline yourself in such a way that you will be arriving early and centered for your sessions.
Not Having Fun
While there’s nothing wrong with taking things seriously in your life, this shouldn’t be the case with aerial yoga. As earlier mentioned, antigravity yoga should be fun.
So, if you mess up a pose, just laugh it off and continue with your session. Simply put, don’t carry yourself around too seriously.
Take it easy, have fun and enjoy your workout. By having fun, it may actually help you to form many other good aerial yoga habits naturally.
Bad Aerial Yoga Habits
As you can see, bad aerial yoga habits can affect your antigravity sessions in various ways. The good news, breaking out of your bad aerial yoga habits is not as hard as it may appear.
However, don’t expect it to happen overnight.
You simply need to commit yourself to break them, create a plan of achieving that and then take a day at a time. With dedication and discipline, you will eventually manage to break them.
And once you do that, you will grow on and off your practice.