How to Set Up the Best Pre- and Post-Run Home Yoga Space: 7 Tips to Try Today!

Even if you are doing yoga at home, you can practice yoga with me in beautiful places like the above overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains through runnersloveyoga.tv, where most classes are in the 20-30 min. range, geared towards the specific needs of runners, and new content is added weekly! Explore the library of workouts HERE.

Since 2020, we all have—hopefully!—gotten better at navigating home workouts: how to do them, what to do exercise-wise, how to time our home workouts, how to set up the best home yoga space. From spring 2020 onwards, we rushed to buy and caused a fairly large back order of home gym equipment from dumbbells to resistance bands, and caused bike shops to completely sell out of bikes in many cities. So, we are now well-equipped for all of these at home workouts that we are evidently doing. But, what really is the best way to set up a great home yoga space? Do you just roll the mat out in the living room and then you are good to go? Not quite. Here is how to set up a distraction-free, easily used home yoga space that will suit your needs for relaxation, restoration, and reinvigoration! And, don’t just take my word for it—included here are tips from some of my own yoga students who have been diligently doing yoga at their own homes for months now!

1. Unless you are actually using your phone for streaming a yoga class, hide that thing!

There really is nothing more distracting that the “ding!” of a text message received during trikonasana (or any other pose for that matter). Will you be able to resist checking to see who and what that was? (Are you human?) Don’t allow technology to disrupt you—and it will, if you give it a chance. (In my in-person classes, I try hard to enforce the “no cell phones at your yoga mat” policy, which was something that I didn’t even need to have a couple years ago, but phone usage has become more than a little contagious—if the person right next to you is checking Snapchat, you are going to get the urge to do so too—and people are often nowadays not comfortably just waiting with themselves—a skill we could all get better at!) This was also the most recommended tip by my own yoga students this semester, who specifically said to hide the phone out of sight! (“Out of sight, out of mind” really does work in this case!)

Being on your mat sans phone is a chance to set up your practice in a way to allow you to calm your mind from electronic stimuli. As I was recently reminded by a restorative yoga book in the past year, we are human beings, not human doings. Allow yoga the full opportunity to fully recharge you from the stress of life, your screens, and everything else. If you need help “tricking yourself” into hiding your phone, just tell yourself you need to charge it, and then charge it out of sight while you do yoga.

That said, like most technological tools, you can just as easily use your phone to aid rather than hinder your yoga practice: your phone can actually be the way that you more easily mix up your home yoga routine with fresh content, scenery, and new moves and routines that you might otherwise never get the chance to experience and benefit from. Phones have actually allowed me as a yoga teacher to reach, teach, and help hundreds more yoga students than I otherwise might have been able to! The shift to online classes in 2020 jumpstarted the new Runners Love Yoga TV, where I publish new classes weekly, and where you can access classes directly from your laptop OR your phone through the new iOS or android apps. (Pro tip: sign up through the website so you can choose from the monthly or annual subscription, and then download the app to log in! The app has a ton of features which make it easy to streamline your phone usage for yoga to keep yourself free of distractions too.)

2. If you ARE using your phone for streaming a class, turn off notifications and switch on “do not disturb” mode!

One way to help eliminate your phone as a distraction is to use the AirPlay feature on your iPhone (or the android equivalent) to cast your online class to a smartTV, which makes for a better viewing experience on a bigger screen anyhow! The Runners Love Yoga app actually has a built-in feature to help you do this! So, you are using your phone to stream the class but actually watching on the nice big screen of your TV!

3. Set yourself up with the right equipment: a good mat, two yoga blocks, bolster, and blanket.

Ain’t no fun slipping and sliding around on your sibling’s/mom’s/roommate’s old mat that they use for crunches. Get a yoga specific mat (very inexpensive at many outlets), and get nice equipment that you will enjoy using to make yoga more enjoyable too!

Once we started with more at-home yoga, I invested in a new mat, and a new, legitimate yoga bolster—the latter was a very welcome upgrade from the decorative pillow that I had formerly been using. These small changes really helped transform my yoga corner into a calm sanctuary for me, and signaled to my brain that it was now “yoga time.”

4. Keep your yoga space clean, vacuumed, and tidy.

This one is courtesy of my yoga student Gabby (Thanks Gabby!) as she points out you will be on the floor for a lot of your yoga practice, so you want that space to be clean!

5. Practice in a space with natural light.

From my yoga student Laura: “Try to use natural light by setting up near a window. That way it's a break for your eyes too and the evening ones are actually really nice to do in semi-darkness.”

6. For a more distraction-free zone, practice in an area different from where you work.

I really like this additional tip from yoga student Laura, which reminds me of the tip about saving for bed and bedroom area for sleeping so that you sleep better. Laura: “When I didn't feel like I could focus on clearing my head for yoga, moving away from where I did my homework and classes helped. Whether it was going to a different part of the house or finding an empty study room where I wouldn't bother anyone, just being in a different environment was helpful.”

7. Keep your mat unrolled if possible to make it easier to hop on your mat.

This may just be me, but I find it so much easier to hop on the mat for a yoga session if the mat is just unrolled and waiting for me. I actually keep a yoga mat downstairs in my living room in front of the fireplace (see photo at left!) most of the time (it may not be the most aesthetically pleasing interior design, but it keeps me on my mat more regularly for sure!).

When I come in from a run, that unrolled mat just makes it so much easier to get going—even if leaving it out most of the time means I might be losing the battle against cat hair getting attached to it (see tip #4 about a clean space).

Wherever and whenever you practice yoga in your home, the more you carve out a specific time and place to do yoga, the easier it is to make part of your routine. Happy practicing!