Monday's Yoga Triumph!

[threadwalker]

I don't speak yoga. I take the class, I call it "yogurting", the instructor calls out the move and I do my best to copy what I see the instructor do. I have pretty good idea of my own body mechanics, so when she says "root shoulder into socket" or "open up joint X", I can visualize and do that, but mostly if you were to rate people "beginner, midde, advanced", I'm definitely beginner and utterly not stretchy. I also have nothing to prove, so I have no desire to hurt myself in order to do the best catty-wam-pus pose evah in front of everyone. My awesome yoga instructor reaffirms that yoga is about moving at your own pace and I think she's awesome. (And amazing to watch. Sometimes I forget I'm supposed to be following her lead because I get swept away with how beautifully she does the poses).

My "sad" is that 20 years ago (when I was a strong, stringy karate athlete), all these poses would have been easy-peasy. Yeah.. not no more. Embrace middle age, baby!

Anyway, occasionally we work on hand stands and other unnatural poses that cause us to defy gravity. Not only am I bad at these, the survival instinct my brain screams "Unnatural! Wrong! Put feet back on ground. NOW!" and it makes me ground my feet despite my desire to keep the feet off the ground. Talk about "and I couldn't control my reaction!" And my kindly (awesome) instructor does not push me, but she is aware and encouraging. She even has alternate moves for the gravity impaired beginners such as I.

On Monday we did some gravity defying move after working our trapezoids. With our hands on the floor, we placed our feet against wall at butt-height and made a sharp 90degree bend at our butt. Like a bent handstand. The Brain screamed that I was going to crush my skull and my shoulders agreed, so my feet came down almost immediately the first several tries. But I worked at it and had to work around my own non-stretchiness to get into the pose.

And I did it. I even held it forEVER! (well, I held it for 10 seconds of pure torture which feels like forever).

So there! I yogurted. And the instructor was so pleased, she zipped over and pointed out what I was doing right and then adjusted my head/neck to a neutral position since I was busy staring at the floor (cuz instinct-brain wanted to make sure the floor didn't rush up to crush my skull when I wasn't looking at it).

I was so stoked! I still am. I'm going to have to try it again at the gym tonight. (If I can find a chunk of wall that is not covered in mirror.)

And "dang!", cuz yoga instructor said that move worked the trapezoids and she was not kidding. They still ache this morning. Solution: work the back and shoulders since I've been slacking. Keep up the yogurting.

But I feel pretty proud of myself.

Comments

Go you!

[learnteach.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my few yoga excercises avoid leaving the ground. I'm going to steal from you and go yogurting more. Yay!