Gentle yoga is a style of yoga that is far less strenuous than other forms of hatha yoga. It is less intense, so it can be very useful for yogis who are not capable of fulfilling the demands of other practices, such as seniors, women who are pregnant, practitioners who are recovering from injury, practitioners who are in very poor physical condition or even those who are simply looking for a more relaxed workout. Gentle yoga also can be beneficial to those yogis who already are quite fit but who lack the overall flexibility to be able to do some of the more intense yoga poses.

Gentle yoga accomplishes its goals of providing a workout without putting any unnecessary strain on the yogi by using modifications of standard hatha yoga poses. Sometimes, this simply means that the yogi does not go as deep into a specific posture as he or she otherwise would. For instance, when performing a warrior pose, a practitioner of gentle yoga will keep the feet slightly closer together, so that the front leg does not have to bend all the way down to a 90-degree angle. As a result, this pose puts less strain on the thigh muscles and thus is easier to perform.

Other poses require more extreme forms of modification in order for them to be appropriate for a gentle yoga practitioner. For instance, when performing Purvottanasana, a yogi will perform a variant of the pose rather than simply lowering the intensity of the usual pose. To perform this particular pose, a yogi usually would balance on one leg while holding onto the big toe of the other leg, which he or she would straighten before bending the body toward the raised knee. A practitioner of gentle yoga, by contrast, simply would balance on one leg while holding the other in the air with a bent knee. The yogi would then use the hands to hold the knee in order to provide more support.

In addition to reducing the intensity of a yoga practice by simplifying some of the poses, gentle yoga also maintains a much more relaxed pace than many other styles of yoga. Gentle yoga rarely makes use of Vinyasa techniques that synchronize motions with the body's breath, because these techniques tend to lead to a sustained physical workout. Also, gentle yoga tends to allow its practitioners to take more time between poses in order to allow the body to recover.