Namaste

Now that I’ve had a full four week run at experimenting with yoga, what are my thoughts? My key takeaways from the experience fall into a few categories. Health and fitness benefits, social benefits and the impact of coaching on getting better.

Health Benefits

Flexibility was always felt out of reach for me…see what I did there?

Saying that yoga has some great health benefits may seem obvious to some and questionable to others. For me personally, I found great benefits in recognizing imbalances on each side of my body and as already mentioned flexibility. The focus on holding poses for building muscle strength was interesting as well, as my background in conditioning was always very lifting oriented. Whenever a hold type exercise was on the agenda, I struggled with things like wall sits, but now I definitely see the impact after

The biggest takeaway I learned about my body by far was finding imbalances that I don’t think I would’ve noticed otherwise. There are a few spots, but especially in my hips that my right side feels much stronger and more capable. I experienced this with a number of poses that I was able to find easily on my right side, but as soon as weight shifted over, I struggled to maintain it. I hope to use this knowledge to try and correct these imbalances to the best of my ability.

If you’ve read any of my posts for this trial, I’m sure you’ve read me mention the benefits I’ve seen in the regular stretching yoga required of me, so I won’t bore anyone too much. In addition to stretches, the actual workout element of some poses was pretty intense. Shifting body weight into a shoulder stand can be brutal on the shoulders and back muscles, and be a damned good workout.

Social Benefits of Yoga

There is a huge community of yoga enthusiasts out there. Nearly every class I went to was packed from wall to wall with other students. If you are looking for a community of very welcoming and kind people, I definitely recommend checking out a class. Anyone who has participated in a class can likely reassure this point.

There will clearly be differences ranging from geography down to specific instructors, but I really do think the community deserves a highlight. If you’re not able to join a class, there is a great presence online as well. For the first two weeks, I followed along with a completely free program on YouTube and that was one series of hundreds of videos on the channel.

Benefits of Having a Coach

It may sound self-explanatory, and I suppose I didn’t really know what I had until it was gone, but the influence of a coach is extraordinary. As an athlete for most of my schooling years, I had many coaches throughout my life and I would easily say most of them had a huge impact on who I’ve become as a person. After graduating college, I no longer had a coach, yet it wasn’t until this point that I actually realized how beneficial having a coach is. A coach serves a number of roles including holding you liable, constructing a program for you to follow and adviser on a number of decisions, in and outside of their area of expertise.

When I decided to go to an actual studio, it made a huge difference in my practice. Having someone around to help ensure I was doing a pose correctly was worlds different than standing in my living room, assuming (hoping) I was doing it right. I remember one day, in particular, I was holding a pose, and the instructor walked up and slightly adjusted the way my hips were facing and I felt on a different level. Likely seeing the expression on my face change from relaxed to “Oh shit!” She simply said something along the lines of, “see how much more you feel that.”

What I’m Doing Next

I hope you enjoyed following along my journey so far and would love to hear if you gave yoga a try at all. Leave a comment below or hit me up on twitter.

Now for my next trial. It was slightly inspired by waking up extra early to make some classes before leaving for work, crafting a morning routine. Creating a good morning routine is something I’ve tried from time to time, but haven’t fully gotten one down yet. I fall in and out of different routines, and right now it pretty much consists of reading a quick page from The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and making my bed. Finally biking over to work to start my day for real. I want to try new activities and see what their impact is. I came up with the following buckets of tasks to do each morning. I plan to do something that falls into each of the following each morning: physical priming, mental priming, and achieving the first win of the day before leaving for work. I’ll go a bit more into detail in a future post, but to generalize: Physical priming will be a brief 5-10 minutes of exercise to wake up the body. Mental priming will be waking up the mind thru different practices like journaling, meditating or reading. The first win of the day involves accomplishing a task of some sort. Could be progress on a project, hobby or as simple as making one’s bed.

I hope you’re looking forward to this next trial as much as I am. If you want to join in, let me know and I’ll be sure to give you a big shout out in the next post!

Walking on Sunshine

Relaxed and comfortable after a short session

Finally pulled it off! I went to a yoga class and was not disappointed. I’ve been to a few classes in just a couple of days and really enjoyed the experience.

As soon as I shook off the nasty cold I had, I was totally ready to hop in a class. The schedule was a bit tough to fit into my normal week, so I made sure to move some things around to give some of the different classes a try.

Some of the classes were just like the video series I was following along at home, a variety of poses to build a combination of strength, balance, and flexibility. One of the classes, however, was pretty intense. A class called Yin focused on stretching and opening up connective tissue which involved holding some stretches for what felt like an eternity when holding just a single pose. One of the poses stretched out the glutes and hamstrings incredibly, in regular yoga it’s called the pigeon pose but in Yin, it’s called swan if I remember correctly.

The regular practice has made me feel amazing over the past few weeks. I couldn’t say all the tightness and soreness has been eradicated from my body, but damn do I feel better. The other morning when walking out of my apartment to head to work, right after I came from a class, I felt like my legs were floating. I would recommend everyone at least give yoga a try, even just following along with online videos for free, but a class is where you will see major progress start.

I’ve really enjoyed this trial so far and hope some of you were able to join along with this one or have at least been inspired to give yoga a try. Be sure to come by next week when I reveal what I’ll be getting myself into next!

Not According to Plan

Another week down and not much has changed. I ended up getting pretty sick towards the end of the week and it’s still lingering a bit. I won’t get too deep into the details as there’s not much for major updates though I did make a minor investment in this hobby.

Getting sick kind of ruined my plans for practicing at a yoga class. Surrounding myself with others in a close proximity while coughing and wheezing wasn’t my idea of a good time. I still practiced at home and that was interesting. A major part of yoga is breathing, which I kind of sucked at in the first place, but while I was sick it was a new level.

Small things can often have a big impact, whether it’s a light cold or a small purchase. I decided to pick up a cheap yoga mat to help with practicing at home. A lot of poses are significantly easier now that I’m not just on the floor. Sometimes when trying something new, I tend to try and avoid any investment at all in case I don’t keep interest in it. This has definitely shown me that a small purchase that enhances the experience might be worth it, even if I do move on eventually.

I keep practicing every day, but there just isn’t much variety to offer updates on. By the weekend, I hope to get into a class and tell you fine folks all about it. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for next week’s update!

First Time Yogi, Now Where’s My Picnic Basket

This trial started with no intention of committing to a daily practice, but I ended up following along with a video series on YouTube every day this past week. The sessions were short but a lot of fun and every time I was on the fence about doing so, I’d remind myself it will probably be fun to learn some new pose or stretch.

Anyone who knows anything about my physical ability would know I am far from flexible. I would get consistent crap from my coaches back in college track for how poor my form was and that my stride was a fraction of some of my teammates. I would suffice to say this was largely due to some pretty weak stretching habits. A typical day I might cover a few basics for a couple minutes if anything at all. Practicing yoga has definitely changed that for me. While I still have a few kinks and sores throughout my body, I think a lot of once tight and sore spots have really loosened up.

The benefits haven’t been only physical. Whether it’s a result of feeling physically better or not I’m not too sure, but I feel a lot more relaxed and comfortable over the past week. The amount of learning I’ve been doing has made the experience even more fun. Trying a new pose and getting a feel for the muscles stretching has been a great experience.

The only thing I’m struggling to get behind is things seem to be a bit spiritual for me at times. I follow along with the closing rituals, in this series being some “reminders” by placing the hands to certain parts of the body. I don’t mean to criticize anyone who enjoys these sort of things, but for me, it’s tough to follow along with without feeling a bit silly. For most of my life, I feel I’ve been a pretty secular driven person and have struggled to get behind many spiritual ideas. I’m trying to let that pass and really take in the whole practice of things like yoga, but we will see where this goes over the next few weeks.

I really am looking forward to continuing the practice and, whether I intend to or not, I wouldn’t be surprised if it became part of my daily routine over the next few weeks. I’m also considering researching an actual in-person class with other students over the next week. The video series I’ve started has been a good experience, but I want to see what other options out there are like.