"Is it impossible for you to keep your leg straight?" asked my yoga teacher last week.
In other words, I've started yoga again.
The Hatha vinyasa yoga class I attended last time is not running anymore, but I remember that it was good for me. It was physically very hard but I noticed development in my fitness. I was able to do more and more in each session! The main focus of vinyasa yoga was in breathing though, which I still am incredibly bad at.
This time I am attending a Iengar-style yoga class where the main focus is in bodily alignment. I'm most definitely the worst yogi in the class. My posture is incredibly bad and I have no sense of how to align my body. But I'm not attending this class to be a good yogi, I'm attending it to become a better yogi. There's really no point trying to compare myself to others. But I try to develop myself and improve my skills. I am so incredibly wonky — if I learn to even keep my leg straight, it would be an improvement. My goal is to learn to stand up straight though, it would be fantastic and probably a lot better for me! To get there I will really have to develop my muscle strength though.
What surprised me again was actually how physically hard yoga is. I mean, I am very unfit and really did need some serious exercise. Still, just face-planting at my yoga mat while everyone else was doing some fancy postures was quite a humbling experience.
Have you tried yoga?
*I'm doing the postures presented in the pictures completely wrong. My teacher would cry to see these. They are here for the comedy value only.
I've never tried yoga - and actually i think we don't have many places to learn it here (or most probably no places at all). But it would be cool to try out, and even it looks kinda easy I know that those who make it look simple have practiced for a long long time :D
ReplyDeleteIf you get a chance to try it out sometime I really recommend it! Even if you just get to go to beginners class then you can practise it alone as well once you've learned a little bit. I know, it looks so easy! But actually to do even the poses properly is a lot more complicated than one would think! There's some poses where you really need to have good balance... I can't even stand on one foot yet! Well, at least if I learn even small things it's an improvement for me, haha!
DeleteI started doing astanga yoga last autumn and I love it! I can already see so much progress even thought it's only been about 5 months. I've tried hatha yoga twice before and maybe it was just the teacher but I felt like it wasn't for me.
ReplyDeleteI think having a good teacher makes a big difference. I kind of have an opposite experience to yours! I stopped going to astanga because the teacher was so scary. I've considered buying a yoga DVD, but I feel that I still really need a teacher to check that I'm doing the poses properly. I don't want to do any accidental damage for myself.
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