The Stuff of Yoga: 5 Essentials for the Beginner

A yoga instructor reveals what you really need to get into good form.

So you’ve heard yoga will stretch you out, calm you down, and tone your body, but you’re not sure what you need to start your yoga practice? Read on, but prepare to leave your expectations behind.

First, the only things essential to yoga are your mind and your breath. You don’t even need to be able to move your limbs! But likely you will be moving your limbs. You’ll sign up for a class, drop into a studio, or pop a DVD into the player and follow instruction that has you exploring every range of motion of every joint, stretching your body into new and odd shapes with bizarre and illogical animal names like cow face and half frog. And perhaps you’ll hold yourself in what feels like an unnatural position for an unnatural period of time. Until you shake.

Yes, certain styles of yoga practice are incredibly vigorous. But vigorous or not, the true goal of a yoga practice is to deepen awareness in the present moment—odd, strenuous, or maybe even frustrating as it may be—which requires resisting the temptation to engage with distracting thoughts or emotions. So our essentials list will start with items that help you practice comfortably, safely, with as few unnecessary distractions as possible.

Yoga pants. Don’t show up to the studio in jeans—they won’t do. And it’s not because you’ll be doing splits in your first class. You probably won’t. But have you tried sitting cross-legged in jeans? They restrict your range of motion in the hips; you’ll feel anything but the ease in sukhasana, which translates as easy pose and is simply sitting on the floor with shins crossed and feet under knees.

All You Need to Know About Pillows

“A good laugh and a long sleep,” the old Irish saying goes, “are the best cures in the doctor’s book.” But when restful sleep eludes you, good luck finding anything to laugh about.

If you spend your night tossing and turning, or you wake up less than fully rested, your pillow might not be pulling its weight, according to Keith Overland, DC, former chiropractor to the New York Mets and the US Olympic speed skating team who now practices in Norwalk, Connecticut. He stresses the importance of using pillows to create neutral spine position during sleep. Regardless of your sleep position, he says, “a pillow really needs to fill in the contours under the head and neck.” His advice: Figure out, based on your physique and sleep position, which pillow will depress beneath your head and provide firm support under your neck.

You can find pillows made of just about every material (or every soft material, anyway). Expect to see anything from hypoallergenic memory foam to good old-fashioned goose down inside the pillows at your local sleep store. The latest trend? Grain pillows, like buckwheat, which you’ve certainly seen wrapped around the neck of many weary travelers if you’ve been to an airport lately. There’s no right or wrong when it comes to picking a pillow’s ingredients, Overland says. “People have to look at a pillow that has a material that’s comfortable to them,” he points out. “A lot of it has to do with the way it feels against the body.”

A few of the more common pillow choices:

Water pillows offer customized support: Just fill them with as much water as needed to fit your shape. They’re heavy, though, so be careful not to pull a muscle while moving them during the night.