Namaste? Que?

Last week on my facebook page I asked about Yoga and got an overwhelming response of people telling me it was great and I definitely needed to try it. Everyone loved it and thought it was wonderful, and of course we have all heard what great things it can do for your balance and flexibility, so I finally got up the courage and tried it this morning. I would say it was surprisingly uneventful, but for all of you that have done yoga, it wouldn't be surprising. 

My decision that now was the time to try it was based on my measurements from the other day, actually. One of the things that they measure is your flexibility. You sit with your butt against the wall, legs straight in front of you and they measure how far you can reach toward your toes. Well, I can reach 6" further than I could when I first started, which I decided meant that I was probably flexible enough to not embarrass myself in a Yoga class. Also the fact that all my extremities were symmetrical meant I might have an edge over my old self in balance as well. So yes, my suspicions were correct and I actually did an OK job this morning!

I walked in after a woman who was heavier than I was and was instantly put at ease. I'm still always self-conscious when I try new things that I will be the biggest one in the class, especially when it's guaranteed to be a class geared toward intimidatingly thin girls. This is another thing I don't think chronically skinny people ever think about. Anyway, so I grabbed a mat and set it up near her. I turned around and said "I've never done this before..." and she said "Oh, it's hard". ...*blink* wow, thanks. lol. She recommended I get a second mat, which turned out to be a great idea the further into class I got. We didn't talk much (obviously, yoga isn't that kind of class) but when we got our water break halfway through she smiled at me reassuringly which actually helped a lot. I was better at parts of it than I expected, and worse at others. I surprised myself at how well I did the full body flowing combinations, and was disappointed at how I couldn't do some of the stuff towards the end as well. Overall, though- definitely glad I went. 

So for those of you who have never done Yoga before, I will try to help you understand. The instructor turned on the calming music and turned off the lights and spoke very quietly so at first it was kind of hard to understand her. I'm also pretty sure she had some kind of slight eastern European accent. She focused a lot on breathing and I was kind of surprised before we started she had us close our eyes and "Ask yourself why you're here? What are you goals? What is your purpose?" which is good to do but for some reason it surprised me. I guess it shouldn't have, I knew that Yoga uses some forms of meditation and such. Anyway, so after we were done pondering our existence we did a lot of sitting stretching and then moved to the "downward dog" and "plank" type things. We did them isolated first and then did a combination a few times. I was pretty good at those. Mostly because I've been doing planks a lot more lately. Then we did some standing stuff that wasn't hard, then a lot of one-legged stuff that I was ok at. There was this one move that was surprisingly difficult, I think she called it the "warrior saint". It was one of those things that looked easy but wasn't. It was easier the second time one the other leg after I got used to it. We ended with laying on our backs and relaxing and I really liked how my body felt, because I'd just had a full body workout that had me sweating, but didn't feel punished. And when we were done, my fellow curvy woman told me "You did great!" which really did make me feel better. haha

So the verdict is that I like Yoga, but as my default favorite is Zumba and this is the complete opposite of that, it will take some getting used to. I want to try out a different class time and see how it differs. According to my facebook friend, it was probably Vinyasa yoga. So I think I'll look into the different kinds and see what they're about. I told Will, this is probably gonna be like Spin class where after the first one you're like "well, that wasn't great but I can see why people do it" and then you try it a few more times and eventually add it into your routine. I think I'm gonna start practicing my balance outside of Yoga though, because I really want to be better at the one-legged stuff. Of course I want to be better at everything, which is why I started this blog in the first place. =)