Yesterday I did something, well two things, that I hadn't done before. I went to an Air Fit class with a friend and while I was getting dressed I started thinking about my first experience with yoga. I don't know what inspired it and I am not sure why I have not already looked back at that first class at some point during this past year while my practice greatly evolved and totally changed my life.
My first experience with anything slightly resembling was Body Flow at the gym I belonged to with my parents the year after I graduated and lived at home. It was a combination of Tai Chi, Pilates, and a little yoga. We did some warrior poses, a dancer here and there, and savasana. I liked the ab work pilates offered and I enjoyed dancer pose because I could use my flexibility, but savasana-- I HATED it, I would usually leave before the awkward five minutes where we uncomfortably, sweatily, laid on the floor.
My first official yoga class was at the gym I belonged to near New Orleans and was with a great instructor who was Iyangar trained. I have always been, what I considered, pretty flexible-- I mean I set records in the school sit and reach each year, but little did I know that according to yoga I was far from flexible. I was so UNCOMFORTABLE and FRUSTRATED the entire class.
From the moment I walked in the door I felt lost, there were blankets, straps, huge pillow (read bolsters) and everyone in the class already seemed to know what to grab and how to set up, so I copied them all. I set up my mat and looked around at people stretching-- wasn't this a class to stretch? Why were they stretching ahead of time? This is a question I still sometimes ask myself.
There wasn't a flow during this class (thank God), I would have been lost. I was constantly looking at the other people to see what I was suppose to be doing. I felt that in each pose the teacher had to come and adjust me and once she did I felt that pose in places I didn't know exisisted. We used the props to make the poses more intense. When the instructor said fold forward I just bent forward bending in my back, SPINAL Flexion vs. HIP Flexion as I now know it, she came over, had me stand up, stick my butt out and hinge at the hips. HELLO HAMSTRINGS!
Finally we got to a point where we laid on our backs with a bolster under us and our legs up the wall and I thought THANK GOD! Just when I thought it was starting to wind down, now I was awaiting the awkard laying on the ground moment at the end of class, we did some funky roll/handstand/body to the wall move and the work began again.
I remember looking at this man in his 50's and being super impressed with his flexibility, he had said he had been practicing weekly with a private lesson for him and his wife once a week as well.
I left that class sore, tired, sweaty, and frustrated feeling highly inflexible. I went back a time or two but it wasn't until I moved down the street from a great studio that my practice started to pick up. I would go to the community classes twice a week- one a gentle and the other an all levels vinyasa. Little by little I started to catch on.
The best decision I made was to join a six week beginner class at Namaskar studio with Tina Ward. We focused on a family of poses each week, down dog and tadasna one week, warrior two series another, etc. I was able to go into higher level classes from there and feel confident in my alignment and execution of the poses.
It was during those six weeks that I thought huh, this is it, this is why people go back, I learned about breathing, patience, the idea of a practice, and I was hooked!! I signed up for a work study at the studio and a year later I was completing my 200 hr. training.
YOGA IS A PRACTICE, give it time, give it a solid number of classes, and be patient with yourself before you give up.
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