rediscovering the practice
You'd think that by having a child I'd feel more invincible. When it comes to trying new things, I've pretty much always described myself as a risk taker. But for some reason, as my body got all out of shape and ungainly from having Story, I also lost a TON of self confidence. I began to see myself as some awkward penguin, slumping her way around. And actually, if you looked at my body shape and balance after giving birth, yeah... penguin kind of describes it.
I don't want this negative voice inside me to win. So, I battle her, every day. Part of that battle included making a promise to myself to revisit my yoga practice and to become strong and solid again. The main thing in my way was fear- fear of injury, fear of being too weak, fear of looking like a chubby wubby-fat-fat in class, next to these solid, beautiful yogis and yoginis. But then I remembered something that Tom, my first yoga teacher told me- "It's YOUR practice, not anyone else's. Keep yourself on your mat, don't look to your peers and judge yourself compared to them."
So, that's what I'm doing. I joined a very strenuous and challenging flow class, one where a lot of the people in class are very athletic, beautiful and solid in their practice. And I have decided to appreciate their talents and work on enhancing my own. Every class, I set a small goal- do every vinyasa, work on hopping/floating back into moves, finally do chataranga again... just something for myself. And when I see them do beautiful, awesome flows, I try to push my limits and either join them, or analyze what I need to do to get there one day. It's been fabulous. One thing I didn't like about Columbia Yoga after a while was that I felt like they started dumbing down their classes and making them too easy, so they could have a very non-threatening yoga environment that the clientele of Columbia could get down with. I noticed that we stopped doing inversions, half moons and other intense movements and the pace became very slow. Even in Yoga II, it just got boring. I want someone to challenge me, I want to challenge myself. My yoga practice reminds me of how strong I am, how fluid I can be. I really love that a lot of this class I'm currently taking at Ojas makes me feel like I'm dancing. It's so refreshing and trance-like.
But getting back to fear, there are a couple of moves that I keep running up against. My current teacher is adamant about not doing hand/shoulder/head stands against the wall- something I really like about her. However, my little brain keeps telling me, "you can't," and it's driving me nuts. I keep hitting blocks when it comes to headstand, wheel pose, crane, inverted down dog (I think this is what this is called) and dolphin-stand. Something in me just starts talking, saying things like, "you can't do that. You're not anywhere near fit enough," and, "OMG, you'll just hurt yourself." It's hard sometimes to know whether I should listen to or challenge those voices. I feel like I'm walking the line between safety and self-inhibition.
Today, I decided to just sail through on the breath and try the inverted down dog... and I DID IT. I found that if I just quieted my brain and did it without thinking, it was so easy. I was so happy, I could have jumped up and down...
It just reminded me that the beauty of yoga is that you get an instant reward when you're finally ready to do a move. It's like something clicks in me and I just know that if I try it, I'll get something good out of it.
My next move to conquer is dolphin-stand. This will probably take a while, but I'm setting my sites high.
I don't want this negative voice inside me to win. So, I battle her, every day. Part of that battle included making a promise to myself to revisit my yoga practice and to become strong and solid again. The main thing in my way was fear- fear of injury, fear of being too weak, fear of looking like a chubby wubby-fat-fat in class, next to these solid, beautiful yogis and yoginis. But then I remembered something that Tom, my first yoga teacher told me- "It's YOUR practice, not anyone else's. Keep yourself on your mat, don't look to your peers and judge yourself compared to them."
So, that's what I'm doing. I joined a very strenuous and challenging flow class, one where a lot of the people in class are very athletic, beautiful and solid in their practice. And I have decided to appreciate their talents and work on enhancing my own. Every class, I set a small goal- do every vinyasa, work on hopping/floating back into moves, finally do chataranga again... just something for myself. And when I see them do beautiful, awesome flows, I try to push my limits and either join them, or analyze what I need to do to get there one day. It's been fabulous. One thing I didn't like about Columbia Yoga after a while was that I felt like they started dumbing down their classes and making them too easy, so they could have a very non-threatening yoga environment that the clientele of Columbia could get down with. I noticed that we stopped doing inversions, half moons and other intense movements and the pace became very slow. Even in Yoga II, it just got boring. I want someone to challenge me, I want to challenge myself. My yoga practice reminds me of how strong I am, how fluid I can be. I really love that a lot of this class I'm currently taking at Ojas makes me feel like I'm dancing. It's so refreshing and trance-like.
But getting back to fear, there are a couple of moves that I keep running up against. My current teacher is adamant about not doing hand/shoulder/head stands against the wall- something I really like about her. However, my little brain keeps telling me, "you can't," and it's driving me nuts. I keep hitting blocks when it comes to headstand, wheel pose, crane, inverted down dog (I think this is what this is called) and dolphin-stand. Something in me just starts talking, saying things like, "you can't do that. You're not anywhere near fit enough," and, "OMG, you'll just hurt yourself." It's hard sometimes to know whether I should listen to or challenge those voices. I feel like I'm walking the line between safety and self-inhibition.
Today, I decided to just sail through on the breath and try the inverted down dog... and I DID IT. I found that if I just quieted my brain and did it without thinking, it was so easy. I was so happy, I could have jumped up and down...
It just reminded me that the beauty of yoga is that you get an instant reward when you're finally ready to do a move. It's like something clicks in me and I just know that if I try it, I'll get something good out of it.
My next move to conquer is dolphin-stand. This will probably take a while, but I'm setting my sites high.