How to build your own practice session with Svayam Yoga
Assemble a session from drills aimed at the areas you choose, save it, and run it.
When this is useful
When you know what needs work - usually from your mobility check or from a teacher's assignment - and a full class is the wrong shape for the time you have.
Before you start
- A mobility check helps, because its suggested drills tell you which areas are worth your fifteen minutes.
- A realistic length. A ten-minute session you do four times is worth more than a forty-minute one you do once.
Steps
Step 1
Open the builder
My Drills in the sidebar, then Design Session. It opens a screen headed Design Your Own Session with a five-step progress bar across the top, so you can always see how much is left.
Step 2
Choose body areas and a length
Pick the areas you want to work on and how long you have. These two answers decide which drills you are offered next, so choosing three areas for a ten-minute session gets you very little of each.
Step 3
Pick your drills
You are shown the drills that fit those areas and that length, each with its duration and any caution attached. Choose the ones you will actually do. Read the cautions on anything unfamiliar before you add it.
Step 4
Add relaxation
Choose how you want to finish. Ending a targeted session cold is how you leave the tension you just worked on exactly where it was.
Step 5
Review and save
The review step shows the whole sequence in order with a safety acknowledgement. Give it a name you will recognise in a month - 'Shoulders, 15 min' beats the date it defaults to - and save.
Step 6
Run it
Saved sessions live under the My Sessions tab on My Drills. They play in the same guided player as everything else, so you are not watching a list, you are being taken through it.
What happens next
The session stays in My Sessions and can be run as many times as you like. Completed sessions count towards your practice totals and your streak alongside courses and assigned drills.
An example
Your mobility check flags thoracic spine and hips. You build a twelve-minute session from four drills across those two areas, finish with a short relaxation, name it 'Desk recovery', and run it at the end of the working day three times a week.
Tips
- Two areas is usually the ceiling for a short session. Four areas in fifteen minutes is a tour, not a practice.
- Build one and keep it rather than building a new one each time - the repetition is where the benefit is.
- If a teacher has assigned you drills, do those first. They were chosen by someone who has seen you move.
Safety and limitations
- The builder does not know your injuries beyond what you told us at onboarding. You are choosing the drills, so read the cautions.
- Warm up before anything intensive, and stop at sharp or radiating pain.
- A self-built session is self-directed practice. If you are working around an injury, have a teacher build it with you instead.
Svayam supports a general wellbeing practice. It does not diagnose, treat or cure anything, and it is not a substitute for medical advice, physiotherapy, or an in-person assessment by a qualified yoga teacher.
Related how-to guides
How to check your mobility with Svayam Yoga
Complete a seven-movement mobility check and read the result for each area of your body.
How to work on a tight area of your body with Svayam Yoga
Find which areas are most limited, practise the drills suggested for them, and re-check later to see what has moved.
How to follow a yoga course with Svayam Yoga
Enrol on a course and complete its first session in the guided player.