"Yoga does not transform the way we see things, but transforms the person who sees."- B.K.S Iyengar
Entry 1:
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This week’s practice wasn’t my first time doing yoga, but it was the first time I took a class from the comfort of my home. While I do have a functioning laptop and Wi-Fi, I have access to another great resource which help me throughout the semester: my mother. My mom was certified as a yoga instructor around five years ago, and more recently, converted my brother’s room into an in-house studio for herself after he moved out. I had never taken a “class” with her at home, but I figured now would be a good time to start.
The environment was about as ideal as you could ask for. We started at around 6:30 a.m. while our neighborhood was still quiet and went for about an hour. My mom has accumulated a variety of meditative- style CD’s over the years, and at first, I thought having music playing in the background would throw my concentration off, but it helped me clear my head. I have a problem with overthinking sometimes, especially if it’s quiet, so it was nice to have audio I could focus on instead of getting caught up on something else outside of that moment.
A big thing my mom does in and out of her yoga is monitor her breathing. This was another aspect that helped me fully get into the poses and exercises we were doing. If there was a pose she did that I couldn’t replicate, I would find myself getting kind of frustrated, but she reminded me time and again to just focus on my breathing and try to do what my body was capable of instead of getting annoyed that I couldn’t perfect everything to a tee. While I felt relaxed afterwards, I also felt I sense of energy that prepped me to go into my other tasks for the day that I most definitely would not have had if I had rolled out of bed at ten. Overall, I would say I'm excited to continue my practicing of yoga in the coming weeks and hopefully beyond.
Entry 1:
This week’s practice got me thinking about how yoga could be seen as both physical and spiritual, one or the other, or neither, all depending on who views it. Yoga as a strictly physical exercise makes sense as the contortions and stretching of the limbs help alleviate and reduce pain or stressing of the body as a whole. However, one doesn’t get the euphoric, deep rooted relaxation that comes from a set of poses as they would running or preforming another physical activity. Granted, the body does react positively to these other workouts, but not in such a way that encourages spirituality.
In many ways, yoga is framed as a way to achieve more than physical fitness. Since its philosophies were conceived practicing yoga has been said to advance one’s mental and spiritual fitness as well. This was and is still held to be true in places in the eastern world such as India, while the advancement of the Physical Culture Movement in the west placed more importance on specific body goals that were deemed “acceptable” to society. While this mentality of a strictly physically beneficial yoga is valid and practiced by a wide range of people, it’s almost an injustice to cut the spirituality out of it completely. In this week’s class with Diane Polli, while I did sweat my tush off, I still felt that peaceful serenity after releasing from a pose, especially those that tested my limits like the standing head to knee pose. I also felt that Diane’s instruction throughout the final stages of the set tied in the less performable aspects of a yoga class. Laying in corpse pose, she began to guide our thoughts instead of our physical movements, which was extremely powerful. The addition of these positive affirmations only enhanced the overall feeling of tranquility that was present after the sessions was complete.
Personally, the day after a fulfilling workout is usually marked with aching muscles and joint soreness, and while I did have minor variations of those after effects today, I found that I could stretch through and work them out quicker and less painfully than if I had biked or ran. Everyone has different tastes and interests when it comes to physical fitness, but no matter how or why you practice, yoga is yoga.