Yoga Challenge

This week, together with my housemate, I decided to undertake a new challenge – daily yoga practice for 40 days. I call it a challenge as I am a yoga beginner and have never practised yoga as regularly as that. But let’s start from the beginning.

I first started practising yoga more seriously last year when I was stressed because of a variety of things. Moving away from home was a lot more stressful than I anticipated, so much so that after a couple of weeks I was considering dropping out. With assignment deadlines of some sort on the horizon most of the time and the pressure distance puts on a relationship I decided that YouTube yoga tutorials, although very helpful and inspiring, no longer did it for me. I found out about classes through my students union and joined the Yoga Society and soon went to my first class. It was so much different from learning at home on your own! The fact that we practised outside on a beautiful, warm evening made the experience even better. The society also gave me a chance to meet some amazing new people, many with similar interests and many with interests completely different to mine.

Although my regularity of attendance in classes varies greatly (I haven’t been to a single one last semester! :o), I try to practise what I have learnt at home and I sometimes go back to the YouTube tutorials which got me into yoga in the first place. There are two channels I use for yoga: Yoga with Adriene which is quite descriptive and really talks you through the postures as well as the breathing and meditation and Sarah Beth Yoga which I think is less descriptive in the sequence tutorials however she makes brilliant separate descriptive videos, for example she has a great video about the different yoga styles. The classes I go to teach Hatha yoga in vinyasa flow. I tried to decode what that means and I came up with this – vinyasa flow involves the linking of body movements with breath, i.e. using your breath to guide the movement from one posture to the next. Hatha yoga focuses on physical and mental strength building exercises and postures and involves asanas (movement) and pranayama (breathing). If I’ve got this wrong, please feel free to correct me or point me in the direction of more in depth reading.

With regards to the benefits of yoga I believe I have personally experienced quite a few. Incredible stress relief, relaxation and being able to detach myself from the everyday pressures life often places on us are definitely the main three I experienced right from the beginning. Yoga also has a good reputation for relieving pain. A few years ago I had back pain that did not go away until after a few physiotherapy sessions and daily exercises and, although I did not practise at the time, I realised that regular stretching and exercise were key to keeping the pain at bay. This is where yoga comes in now as part of an exercise routine, and I really think that it plays a big part in keeping my back in good shape. For me yoga also comes with some social benefits. Those that know me will know that I am not always the most sociable person on Earth but I really enjoy meeting new people through YogaSoc and the fact that we instantly have a common interest always makes the conversation easier to start.

The only regret that I have relating to yoga is that I didn’t start practising sooner.