How Yoga Works

So today I finished the book How Yoga Works. I can honestly say that while I would love to go on and on about the ending, I fear at least one of the three people who have viewed my blog have not read the book.  For that reason I will spare all the details of how I feel on paper as to not ruin it for that one soul who has yet to experience it.  But my, what a book.  I was genuinely surprised and pleased  at the book.  And that was only for the story line.  When you actually get into the details and philosophy of how yoga works, and how yoga is intended to work in someone, it really brings a new dimension not only to the book, but also to the discussions over the sutras we are having in class.

The class discussions are actually starting to become more of my favorite time in class, even over the yoga which is surprising even to me.  Having the little background of yoga that I do, I know that I really enjoy the asana poses because they help limber me up and help me find a peace and calmness to my otherwise hectic days.  But going over the sutras, and How Yoga Works, and the discussion of how they are to apply to my life, in even the most minuscule way, is really cool.  It is another way to think about things and is another way that I can stop and take a step back and think about things which causes me to slow down and get more of the peace the same way the asana does.  More than that, it is quite deep and gives me something to think back on during the week more than any of my other classes.  I mean there is only so much deeper you can do with European history or American policy decisions.

Outside of class I really tried to focus on my personal practice, especially with missing almost all of last week and not really being diligent there.  While I have probably taken a few steps back in terms of my practice because of it, I am able to stretch myself further in the sense that I am doing more poses and incorporating it more than just good stretches and limbering up, however that is still a lovely benefit I am getting. In fact, just this morning I noticed how much closer I am to touching my toes while bending over while standing and that was a nice visual to show me how much I have improved in such a relatively short time.

Week 4

So I missed last week due to a lot of different reasons, and this week is going to be incredibly short as well.

Due to lots of different reasons of family coming in, tests starting this week and other factors, I have been way to stressed out and busy to keep up with my personal practice and has even affected me getting the reading done in time so I cant comment too much about that other than it is interesting how everyone now wants Friday to teach them yoga to heal physical ailments when the Captain and Friday have gone so far beyond the physical healing of yoga and moved onto the deep philosophy of why the yoga does heal physically. That contrast is something that I think is interesting and cant wait to read more so I can see how everyone else progresses in their yoga as well.

The Second Step

Week 2 of these reflection blogs and so far I can only see small progress.  To start with the readings we have done, we started with the actual yoga sutras which are pretty cool. However out book is a commentary and I was trying to read all the commentary and understanding none because of all the Sanskrit words used and the general assumption of baseline knowledge by the author.  However, looking at just the sutras themselves made things easier.  They are very simple and deep which is something that doesn’t really happen today anymore in readings or serious philosophy that I have read. What I didn’t like, but think it will change once we get through them all, was how I couldn’t understand some of them by themselves because they lead to the following sutras.  Once we talk about all of the sutras I think this will change because I will understand what the whole is talking about to look at the individual.  The book, How Yoga Works is also getting really interesting as they are getting into deeper aspects of yoga philosophy within it, it is explaining it all to me as well. Although some areas and concepts like the idea of making the inside the outside, I’m still needing some work or don’t quite understand it yet.

            The class asana times are still just as enjoyable as they have been. The slow pace is nice to have and not adding a lot allows us to focus on the poses we have started and to get better at them because we are doing them so much.  While I would still like to move on to more advanced and different stuff, I like the pace.  Some of the poses, like downward facing dog, have gotten to be a lot easier to do. Not less painful on my hamstrings and stuff, but I feel better in the poses and that the poses themselves are looking better.  Which I think counts for something.

            That same idea of feeling better in poses even if I’m not really doing much better has carried over to my own personal practice.  At least for my hamstrings, they feel better even when I’m stretching but I can’t tell if I’m actually starching farther yet. While I know that part will come, it would be nice if it happened sooner than later.  The other nice part of my personal practice is how I feel after.  Just like after class, feeling relaxed and calm is something that is really nice to have with how busy I am this semester and with everything I am involved in. If I get nothing else from this semester and the class, the ability to take some time and unwind and calm myself is something that I will always use.

Every Journey Begins with a Single Step, or Yoga Pose

So each week for this yoga and philosophy class we are supposed to reflect in different blog posts about different things from class and the reading for the week. Since I always like to be productive with my time and what I do, I’m going to add all them together into one massive entry once a week. Sorry for all yall who were hoping for daily insights into my life.

            Like every class we have assigned readings. Most of the readings have been from the book How Yoga Works which I still cant tell if its fiction or not, but so far the story has kept my interest more than I thought a book about yoga could.  The protagonist is a young girl traveling from her home in Tibet to study under a new yoga teacher in India and because of the quasi-corrupt nature of their police force is arrested and has spent the past months teaching the local captain yoga in hopes of it allowing her to go free.  The interactions between the girl and the captain are the most interesting because that is where the book is teaching the reader what yoga is through their relationship. The rest of the story I have not paid too much attention too so far because it is not as interesting to me as the yoga part. Ya her little dog is cool and the sergeant is a drunken perv, but that part of the story didn’t really get developed until the reading we had for today.  Even with that new development I still am more interested in the yoga philosophy because I would like to see how it affects me with the yoga we do in class and my feeble attempts to do yoga on my own. However, I have really enjoyed it because while I have done some yoga in the past when I am home with my mom, I never got too into the philosophy and history of it.  This makes me appreciate some things more, and embrace the suck of some of the poses because I am about as flexible as a concrete pillar.

             Speaking of my lack of flexibility, the class asana is a lot of fun.  Not as hard as I was expecting due to what I have done in the past, but still really helpful and it is awesome to have time in the day that I don’t have to worry about setting aside to calm down and relax and focus.  Some of the moves, like downward dog, I have done because I mean, who hasn’t done downward dog in yoga.  I have even had the pleasure, if you call it that, of knowing the warrior pose we did from “power yoga” this old Russian lady who grew up in the USSR learning how to be an Olympic gymnast would force my club swim team to do. Most of the other poses I have never done so its cool to learn other ones from what I have already experienced.  Most of the poses are also pretty easy, compared to what I had to do in my mom’s class I attended. Which makes sense because most of us in the class have little to no experience so we need to create a foundation and my mom has been doing yoga for around a year now so she can do more advanced things.  Some of my favorite, and least favorite, things we have done in class is down dog and walking the dog, along with some of the other leg poses because I have always had a problem with my hamstrings being really tight. So while I am trying to suffer my agony in silence during class, I can see and feel them slowly loosening up which is awesome and something I hope to continue all semester with.

            This slow work on my hamstrings, along with the chest and shoulder opening poses we did the first day are hard for me to do on my own so I have been a little slow in getting a set routine established outside of class. Mostly I use poses we have done in class to target different areas for a better stretch and to loosen up after PT or working out. Which while it isn’t a good practice or anything, it does feel awesome and a good start for me to slowly get into a more steady time of going through more poses and things.