I won’t sugar-coat it. Having a child of any age makes a yoga home practice pretty damn hard. Especially if you have a little one. I would know.I’ve been practicing almost exclusively at home for the last 4 years (if you do the math that’s about how old my daughter is.. Yep.). Now, I have the luxury of 3 morning to myself every week when my daughter goes to preschool. But I did my time finding creative ways to squeeze in a pose here and there in a vain attempt to maintain some sort of sanity.

I can tell you from experience that If you’re a mom, you have TAKE every opportunity you can to take care of yourself, because you never know what your next day is going to be like. Every. Single. One.

A while back, I wrote my best tips to create and maintain a consistent yoga home practice. It’s a strategy I’ve developed after many MANY epic fails at starting and stopping a regular home practice. Since, I’ve failed so many times, I have a few insights on what NOT to do if you want to rock your home practice. Learn from my mistakes. Don’t do these things!

See also So You Wanna Be a Yoga Mama?

How to Ruin A Yoga Home Practice

1. Plan to just squeeze it in whenever you have some spare time.

   I took my yoga practice for granted for years. I did it when it was easy or when I needed a good stretch. But when I felt OK or had something else to do, I skipped it. No problem. Except it was a problem when I realized I hadn’t even unrolled my mat for 2 or 3 weeks at a time. Truth: There will ALWAYS be something else to do. I choose yoga instead because I know it grounds me, keeps me healthy, keeps stress at bay, and offers me SO much more than I can even put into words—especially now that I’m a mom. For that reason, my home practice isn’t optional. I have specific times on my calendar every week (just as I did when I attended yoga classes at a studio) and don’t schedule anything else during that time. Period. End of story.

2. Take it TOO seriously.

   As I mentioned in point number 1, I take my yoga home practice pretty seriously. If I didn’t, it would never happen. HOWEVER, it’s definitely possible to take it too seriously. Look, practicing yoga at home is just not going to the same as practicing in a studio (especially when you have a little one!). There will be noises, distractions, messes, etc. I regularly practice next to a big pile of toys and a basket full of laundry. It might feel a little less sacred, and that’s OK. Just because it’s different doesn’t mean that it isn’t valuable. In fact, I’d argue that practicing yoga at home can be more fun because it’s a little more laid back. Need to take a bathroom break? Fine! You like to pause every now and then to take a sip of coffee (or wine, maybe? I’m not judging..). Nobody’s gonna stop ya! Decide half-way through your yoga video that that particular teacher has the most annoying voice you’ve ever heard? OK… Stop it and find something else. It’s YOUR practice. You don’t have to share it with anybody else, so do it YOUR way.But don’t NOT do it because it doesn’t feel Zen enough or you’ll NEVER do it.

3. Put your phone at the top of your mat.

   I’m SOOOO guilty of this. And you know what? Every buzz and blink, I’m tempted to stop what I’m doing, pick it up, and see what the deal is. Even when I resist that urge, I spend the whole rest of my practice wondering if I’m missing something important and it totally ruins my practice. Unless you’re a surgeon and you’re on call for an emergency, do yourself a favor and just leave it another room.

4. Peek at your email just one more time first.

   I am writing from experience here. Don’t do it. It’s too easy to get sucked into the endless rabbit hole that is the World Wide Web, and we both know that when that happens you’ll lose at least 20 minutes of your precious “me time” to responding to emails that probably aren’t that important anyway, liking someone’s vacations photos, or watching videos of cats doing cute things. Before you know it, your window of opportunity to take care of yourself will close and you’ll still be stressed out, drained, and wondering why because, after all, you DID get a break today…

5. Say to yourself, I’ll practice in a few minutes…

   right after I {put in a quick load of laundry, wash up the dishes, pick up the toys, make a phone call, etc.} Refer to number 4. Don’t go there.

6. Only schedule your practice time when you’re on kid duty.

   Even if you schedule your yoga home practice during their nap time every day, there’s always the chance that they’ll wake up screaming, or, worse, their eyes will pop open the second you try to put them down in their crib. This always happened to me when my daughter was little, and it was the most frustrating thing in the entire world! So, I had to be really creative about how to best fit it in. Sometimes the best I could do was only a few minutes at a time. Other times, I’d get in a full 45 minutes, which felt like I’d taken a week-long vacation or spent the afternoon at a fancy spa. And, of course, we did yoga together sometimes (but it’s really not the same.) So, ask for help. Squeeze in a quick session before bed every night or, if you’re one of those lucky mamas who can wake up before your children in the morning, fit it in then. But try to find a stretch of time (at least once a week) where you can focus on YOU and YOUR yoga practice. (Even if that means giving your little one a few minutes of screen time—gasp!)

Confession time! I want to hear from you. What are some things that you’ve thwarted your own best efforts to consistently practice yoga at home? Comment below so I can learn from your mistakes, too.

*Photo by Lisa Parker