Just Breathe

It has been awhile since I last posted about yoga. That is because there have been changes and I am slow to adjust to change. My favorite yoga studio and my favorite yoga instructor are gone. She announced that there were some big changes coming and I got excited for more class times, bigger studio etc. Those things are all happening but not with her. She sold her studio and is currently not teaching. SAD DAY FOR ME! It feels like I have been dumped by my secret crush...I loved her classes and I loved how she taught.
I went to the new owners class and, although it was a great workout it was not the same. I have been going but instead of really looking forward to going I have been finding excuses why I can't go, and when I go coming home not feeling as good as I used to. So I started looking for different places to practice yoga. This falls under the "out of my comfort zone." I found out where my other favorite instructor teaches and went to one of his classes, again I loved how he taught but it was not hot yoga and I did not come home all sweaty, which makes me feel like I did something.  I let my daughter convince me to go to Bikram Yoga.  She has been practicing that style for about as long as I have been doing hot power vinyasa yoga, and we both try to convince the other one why "ours" is best. I went to my first class and I survived. It was like practicing yoga in the Mojave Desert in July. It was different than what I was used to in terms of how the class flows but some of the postures were the same and I was able to complete the whole class without stopping. I don't know if I am completely convinced yet, it is more expensive so they jury is still out. For now I will just breathe and keep looking for the right yoga fit.

Comfort Zone

I like living in my comfort zone, I don't need to jump off cliffs to feel the excitement of life. My husband loves downhill mountain biking because he likes the feeling of being almost out of control reaching past his comfort zone.
Starting yoga was out of my comfort zone, I spent far too much time worrying about what "others" would think, or how silly I looked. I went out of my comfort zone and discovered that I loved yoga, loved the instructor, loved the studio. Last week my instructor announced that she was selling her studio and taking a much needed break. Now I am back to feeling like I need to step out of my new yoga comfort zone and try something new. Maybe it will just be the new instructor, and maybe I will love her as much as I love my current one. Maybe I will hate the way she teaches, or runs the studio and will have to go further out of my comfort zone and find a new place.  Yoga has become an important part of my life, and I am learning to embrace change and taking those baby steps out of my comfort zone.

It's Been a While.

It has been a while since I posted, it has been a while since I have been to yoga and I need to get back. I can tell a big difference in my body when I neglect to go to yoga. It is amazing how fast I start to loose what I have worked so hard to gain.  My mind starts switching over from thinking that I love yoga to humm maybe I don't. I will make it a priority to get back to yoga this week, I like it when I crave to go.  Walking into that hot room, setting my mat out in my favorite spot and adjusting it just so. Sitting down and stretching before class starts and clearing my mind, relaxing and not worrying about what is going on outside of the yoga room walls. Yes, I will be back to yoga next week.

Some Yoga is Better than No Yoga

That was my thought as I went off to a beginners yoga class yesterday. I couldn't make the "regular" class later that night and I needed to go to yoga, so I went to the class that fit my schedule. It was a different instructor and she was really nice but she had a different style and flow than my normal instructor. I find it funny how I am such a creature of habit,  and it is hard for me to do something different even if it is just a different yoga teacher. I don't live like a hermit never leaving the comforts of home afraid of change, I love change, when it comes on my terms.
When my husband and I were first married he was in the military and we moved a lot. Never living in one place longer than 4 years, until now. I like to redecorate quite often and moving has been a bonus, I have had a clean slate and could do what I wanted to do. But for the last seven and a half years I have lived in the same house and the same town and find that I am very content with that. I have settled in and found a new comfort zone. So I am not a stranger to change, but while I am on the yoga mat I would like things to remain relatively the same. I have not ventured out to different yoga studios, maybe that is not a good thing, but I am very content to practice where I started and stay.  I like going into a situation and knowing what I am going to get. I like going to the same restaurants and ordering the same thing. I like routine and familiarity in my everyday life,  and I like adventure and challenges and change on my terms.

Benefits of Yoga

When I started practicing yoga I didn't really think too much about the benefits of it other than to be more flexible and hopefully loose a few pounds. Each time I am practicing yoga the instructor is always mentioning some health benefit from practicing yoga. At first my friend and I would joke a little, and after the instructor would mention a health benefit of yoga we would wispier to each other, "and it also cures cancer." We really didn't take the healing benefits of yoga seriously, we did a lot of joking at first, mainly to cover up how awkward we felt doing weird poses.
But I have been paying attention and doing some research and yoga is very healing and is a good way to stay healthy. I am an asthma sufferer and yoga has helped me learn breathing techniques that has reduced my dependance on an inhaler, I still need it on occasion but I have not been using it on a daily basis anymore.  I have also been relatively healthy since I started yoga, when the cold season comes around I usually get a more mild version of what everyone else is suffering. Yoga is good for the spine and back problems, my posture is great and hopefully this will help prevent any back strain or problems that come with getting older.
Research also says that yoga is good for fighting depression by improving your mood and lessening anxiety.  They have found that yoga can lower blood pressure, cholesterol, and resting heart rates, leading to a healthier heart. While almost any exercise is good for the heart, experts are saying yoga's meditative component may give it an extra boost by helping to stabilize the lining of the blood vessels that, when irritated, contributes to cardiovascular disease. Since the lining, reacts to stress, and meditation can lower stress hormones, yoga may be causing a cascade of events that could reduce the risk of a heart attack or stroke.  Research has shown that women who practice yoga during and after breast cancer treatment experience less stress and discomfort and had higher energy levels. Yoga also helps reduce the side effects of menopause, reducing hot flashes, boosting energy and mood levels.
For me I didn't start practicing yoga because of these researched based studies, I started because my friend bugged me enough and I went. I absolutely love going to yoga and these added health benefits are just the icing on the cake.

Patience and Tolorance

I went to yoga yesterday and I arrived a few minutes later than I like and my favorite spot was taken so I choose a spot a couple of rows back next to the wall. After a few more minutes a nice gentleman came and put his mat next to me, but he was really close, he was violating my personal yoga space, and I was a little bugged by this, he even had his water bottle next to me and I had to move up or down my mat to make sure we didn't bump into each other. I was bugged all through warm up ans as we started flowing and we made our way into the Warrior 2 position the instructor was correcting my arm position and talking to the class she said the two words I needed to hear, patience and tolerance as she was gently guiding my arm into the correct position.  I thought to myself, "Are you a mind reader?" So I decided that I would practice some patience and tolerance along with yoga last night. Soon we were working too hard to worry about who was next to me and how close they were. It always happens she seems to say exactly what I need to hear, when I need to hear it. 

Master of Your Thoughts

Yoga has also been beneficial in helping me control my mind. I have not completely succeeded but I am continuing to make baby steps in this area. Like I have said before, I have a wandering mind and it usually takes me to dark places, and has a great imagination for the negative things in my life, sometimes taking over control, finding myself in a pit of despair in no time.   Trying hard to regain positive thoughts is really hard, maybe it is because it has 40 plus years training in the negative. Just the other night I was going over and over a situation that is not really positive in my life and trying to figure out how I can balance having something that brings out negative thoughts and self doubt without completely removing this "thing" from my life. I have put distance and that helps but it is not possible to remove it completely. I am trying to figure out how I can maintain control of my thoughts and not let what happens, that I have no control over, take over my thought process. I am learning to let it go, and I am doing pretty good with this but I would like it to not even enter, I would like to be in a place where I can refuse those thoughts entirely.
Yoga is a great place for me to work on this,  Just the other day while at  yoga I was doing really well, I was hitting the standing balancing series like a pro, then it happened, my mind wandered off to some other topic and I wobbled and almost fell out of the pose. It only took me a second to bring my concentration back to the pose so I wouldn't hit the floor.  If I could quickly refocus my negative thoughts as quickly as I did in yoga class that stinky thinking would be a thing of the past.

Mighty Mouse

It is really important to connect with the yoga instructor. I didn't think that it would matter so much when I first started but the more I went the more I liked,  then loved the way my yoga teacher taught. She would have a fill in once in a while and they were ok, but for me it was not the same. She also had another instructor for a while and I liked him equally well but for different reasons.
My yoga instructor is a little tiny thing, and my friend and I both being above average in height dubbed her mighty mouse, in the most affectionate way. She was tough she pushed and encouraged us to find the edge and then go beyond. If we fell out of a pose then so what, our mat was the place to get messy. Every time she gives a correction I feel like she is talking to me directly, even thought she is clear across the room. Being a yoga instructor is more than just calling out poses, it is correcting and adjusting until that pose is requiring the most out of everyone.  Anyone can go to yoga and fake it and pretend to be fully engaged in a pose, but that is not where the benefits lie and at first I was lucky to just make it through a class. Once I started building some muscle tone and could actually do the first down dog without my muscles screaming at me, I started trying really hard to listen to her voice and just do it.  It is in the little course corrections, sometimes unseen and go unnoticed that the real work comes and the results are felt. Just listening to what she was telling me to do and make all the little corrections I soon started seeing results, feeling that I too might just be able to practice yoga and not fake it.
This is true for life, it is not the big things that need to be changed, it is the little course corrections that need to be made to stay on the right path. Not making them doesn't seem like a big deal at first but over time the affects of not making those changes will be seen.  I am working daily on making those small course corrections both on and off the yoga mat. I want to be true to myself and I want to reach and stretch to be the person I know I can become. I try hard to listen to that inner voice that is giving me little course corrections throughout the day, and trying hard to make those adjustments in my life.

Clarity

Practicing yoga brings clarity to a lot of areas of my life. I try hard to see the other person's point of view. We all have opinions and we all think we are right. But  at times while I am focusing on trying my best to perfect a pose on the yoga mat clarity comes and it brings understanding and acceptance.  I need to be still to hear, and focused to understand, and open minded to suggestions. Sometimes I only hear part of the story and make huge assumptions based on what I believe is truth, when possibility there are two sides of the story or possibly more of the story that went unheard or untold.
Tonight I had the perfect example of not getting clarity. One of my sons has eggs for breakfast every morning, his dad is a great short order cook and makes the kids what they want for breakfast every day. This child wants scrambled eggs everyday. I buy a lot of eggs but we used a lot of eggs this week and I seem to have used the last 2 eggs to make some cookies this afternoon.  After dinner I told my son, "Just wanted to let you know you can't have eggs for breakfast tomorrow, they are all gone." I wanted to tell him so that in the morning when he came upstairs expecting eggs he wouldn't be disappointed and let that ruin his whole day and he would have time to think of something else that he could choke down for breakfast instead of eggs.  A couple of hours later my son asked his dad, "Why won't mom let me have eggs for breakfast, is she mad at me?"
This was a perfect example of not listening, or maybe not processing what was said. He just heard you can't have eggs, and his mind turned off all other information. He had to go around all night wondering why I was punishing him by not letting him have eggs. How many times have I done the same thing? Jumping to conclusions and making assumptions based on half truths. How many times have people taken what I have said or done and only heard what they wanted to hear to make it fit their needs?  I admit I am guilty of this and have worked hard to be accepting of others and myself, and sometimes the only clarity that I get is to let it go and accept what is.  

Sweat and Tears Look the Same

Sweating comes with yoga, I practice Power Flow Yoga in a hot room. When I first started it was really hard for me to be that hot. As soon as my body started sweating it would drive me crazy, my head would itch as the sweat started, and I had a hard time concentrating on what the teacher was saying because I wanted to stop sweating. It took a long time for me to embrace that feeling. Now when I start sweating I welcome it and know that is the moment when I start working, when my body it cleansing itself of all the bad stuff. When I stand in warrior 2 position and see the sweat rolling off of my arms I feel a sense of accomplishment. 
There are a lot of things mentally that I have struggled with, and there are times when I am practicing yoga and I have cried because of something that is weighing heavy on my heart or a situation that felt overwhelming to me at the time. The  good thing about practicing yoga in a hot sweaty room is that tears and sweat look the same. Crying is an emotional release, not something I readily do in my real world, but on the mat I can't even hide from myself.
I don't know if I can quite put my finger on why yoga is so emotional sometimes but maybe it is because on the yoga mat it is all about me, I can't check Facebook, or my phone, I can't even check the time, I have to be totally checked into me. I want to create a better me each time I am on the mat. It is taking years to shed some of the bad habits and negative talk that I have bombarded myself with over a lifetime. Slowly letting go of past pain, disappointment and mistakes. Realizing that it is ok to be me and that each day I want to be a better version of me. It is hard. It is a constant struggle. I am making baby steps and sometimes that is frustrating. On the mat I can be real with myself, I can cry and no one is the wiser, but me. Healing emotional pain is difficult but on the mat I can make small strides and when I come home and peal the soaking wet workout clothes off of my body I know that I have succeeded in my yoga practice for that day.

Flexibility

Once on the yoga mat it is hard to hide from the real hard facts. In real life we can dress for success, we can hide our flaws with over sized clothing. We can mask our imperfections with make-up, and we can style our hair in a way that is flattering.
The proverbial rubber hits the road, happens on the yoga mat. On my yoga mat is where things get messy. I am challenged each time I go to yoga and there is no hiding. I already knew that I needed yoga so that I could move with ease while chasing an active 3 year old, but the reality of how non-flexible I am shows its ugly head every time.  Take tonight for example, we were almost done with yoga we were in the final stretch, so I was plenty warm and had already been stretching for an hour, when the instructor had us sit with our leg extended and reach for our toes, not rounding our back but hinging at the waist. She mentioned that it is ok if we couldn't go very far. There I was with my legs extended as far as they would go, and that wasn't very far, trying with all my might to hinge not bend my waist over to the floor. I was able to go about 3 inches. I am so UN-flexible. I don't think there was visible movement when I tried to hinge at the waist.
Yoga isn't for the most flexible people, although I am amazed at how flexible some people are. Yoga is for everyone. For as inflexible as I was last night I have been stretching and practicing yoga for almost 3 years and I have seen huge strides in my flexibility. My back, shoulder, legs, you name it, it has become more flexible. Will I ever be able to sit with my legs extended and touch my tummy to the floor, like my 5 year old can so easily do? Probably not but knowing that I am getting better all the time helps and I can stand and touch my toes, which I could not do when I started. Yoga is about taking the baby steps and celebrating even the small victories that happen each time I come to the mat! 

Religon and Yoga

Before I started yoga I wondered how that would fit into my religious life. I am very religious and my beliefs run deep, how would yoga interfere with my belief system? I didn't want to "worship" an idol such as Buddha, I didn't want to do any weird chants, masked as praying to said Buddha.
Luckily for me my fears were not fact based. Yoga is not a religion! It is a form of exercise that brings together the mind, body and spirit to make oneself better. (that is my own definition) There are aspects of yoga that reach our spiritual side and that in of itself might be considered a practice in religion, and for some the practice of yoga is "their" religion. For me I find that it strengthens my own religious beliefs.
How does it do this? My mind is usually running from one thought to the next trying hard to focus on the good thoughts without letting the negative thoughts run wild. When I am at yoga it takes all my brain effort to concentrate on the pose I am trying to do. I found out about 6 months into practicing yoga that I really do well if I can focus on the instructor's voice and not let anything else enter my mind. So for 75 minutes my mind is focused on my body, and on making the most out of every single pose. I can feel the minute my mind wanders, I fall out of a pose or I miss an instruction and get left behind. I can come to yoga with things weighing heavy on  my mind and spirit and by focusing on just me for a little while I seem to gain clarity of whatever the situation.
When I pray, which I do several times during the day, I more often than not do not take the time to stop and listen. While on the yoga mat at the end of a workout, I have received many answers to prayers because I am lying perfectly still, my mind is calm and I am ready to listen.
Yoga also incorporates meditation, compassion for self and others, non-judgement, these virtues can also be found in religions as well, and for me the more I can practice the good the better.  Yoga is not a religion, it doesn't change or interfere with my religious beliefs, when I realized this I was able to embrace yoga for the healthy benefits that it brings to my mind and body. 

Vulnerable

I am going to be real vulnerable, I am going to put myself out there,  yoga has been teaching me that. I am an introvert, I don't like crowds and I really don't like social situations where I have to talk to new people. Even that was hard for me to type. I come across as confidant but inside I am scared and afraid.
Starting this blog, which will hopefully turn into a business, more on that later, scares me. It makes me vulnerable. I have spent a majority of my life building up walls of protection around myself. I am careful of who I let in for fear of getting hurt or rejected, which has happened, I am sure it happens to everyone.
I am afraid to go out and sell myself, to promote what I do and who I am, to toot my own horn. This has stopped me from following some of my dreams,  but I am stepping out of the comfort zone and giving this endeavor my all.  Yoga has taught me that I need to stretch and not be afraid to try new things. When I first started yoga I loved doing tree pose, it was easy and I felt a master of tree pose.

Hey, ya gotta start somewhere.  One of the poses that I thought I would never conquer was crow, how was I supposed to get all 5'10'' of my body to balance on my elbows and wrists?

I thought for sure I would never master that pose. But I attempted the pose each time, I went out of my comfort zone, even falling flat on my face, thought I broke my nose once, and finally after 2 and a half years I can do crow! I look forward to doing crow and feel a rush of exhilaration each time I hold the pose, and I am a victor even if I only hold it for 30 seconds!
So I am going to stretch way out of my comfort zone and put myself, my work, my talent, my hobby out there for the world to see and if I fall flat on my face, I will get back up and try again. If I am rejected I will persevere. I can't control what others think of me or what I do I can only try my best and be who I am.  

Why Yoga

I am 44 years old and didn't find yoga until almost 3 years ago. I have been a fad exerciser, I have had gym memberships and have enjoyed going to various classes, but nothing has ever stuck as something that I hope to do for the rest of my life. I attend for a while and then get distracted or busy or just plan loose interest. I tried a yoga class at the gym one time about 10 years ago and it was torture. I could not just lay there and relax I had a million things that needed to get done and trying to turn the outside world off and focus while just laying there was impossible for me. That was the one and only experience I had with yoga and I had no interest in ever doing it again. I have a friend that is really into yoga and she tried for years to get me to go and I just was not interested at all.
Three years ago we brought our little girls home from Haiti, I went from having a 10 year old as the youngest child in the home to a 2 year old. She wanted me to sit on the floor and play with her, and read to her. She required constant movement on my part and at 41 I felt like an old lady. Everything hurt, my back ached, my legs couldn't sit crossed legged, it was hard to get up and stand up straight. I am not over weight, although loosing 10 lbs would be wonderful, I had been running for the last 6 months and hated every minute of it but that is what everyone was doing, I needed to do something to feel 20 something again.
My friend that loves yoga, another friend and I were talking she was trying to convince us to come try out the place she does yoga, so we decided to give it a try, I didn't love it at first but I loved the way I felt after. Within a short time of going regularly I could keep up with my now active 3 year old and 6 year old and I love yoga!