I was on my way to one of the best yoga classes I’ve ever taken when I spotted the woman sitting outside her yoga studio. As I approached, I smiled at her and asked if she was cold. She said yes, and so began my first yoga experience.
Well, that doesn’t sound like a good idea. The woman’s name is Lauren. She’s a 27 year old from Northern California. I ask her about her yoga practice, and we talk, and she tells me she started in August and finished in December. She also tells me that it takes about four weeks to get into a class because she can’t count to ten without breaking out in a sweat. And so, with that story, we begin to talk.
After a while, she told me that she had never done yoga before. I ask her what she does for her workouts, and she says she does some Pilates. I ask if she likes it. She says, “It’s kind of a slow workout. I do it to stretch. It’s sort of like stretching my muscles in a more gentle way than if I did a workout like a weight-lifting workout.
Of course, when I first heard the term yoga, my first thought was that it sounded like a kind of yoga workout. But I started wondering how it could actually be a workout because the word is used in many, many different ways in many different places. I decided to ask her about it, and she said she does it often, but not to stretch. She said she does it as a way to relax her body before yoga.
It’s a great way to relax your body and mind. When yoga is done in a room without windows, walls, or other distractions, our mind just naturally wanders. It’s hard to stop your mind wandering when your body is relaxed and your mind is clear.
I don’t think anyone who is not a yogi would give this a chance but this is one of the best ways to relax your body and mind. I had a friend who was really into yoga, and he said, “I will never ever want to do yoga, I hate it!” So I asked him why he hated it, and he said, “Because it’s so hard.
This one is from the “Goddess’s Guide to Yoga.” It’s about what you do with your body and mind. The “whole body” is the body. It’s your body that you work with when you’re in your body. The mind is the mind. We use the mind as a tool, not as the body.
I love that this is from the Goddesss Guide to Yoga. Because if you really want to know what yoga is about, you can use this to understand what your body needs to do. When you feel like the entire body is a muscle, and you cannot move without feeling like your body is on fire, then you need to get rid of the physical and mental pain (and therefore the body pain) that feels like a fire fight.
This reminds me of a movie that I watched recently, a comedy by Adam Sandler called Hot Tub Time Machine. It’s about a man who’s trying to get in his hot tub with his wife in a small, claustrophobic room. When they try to turn on the hot tub, they think its going to explode, but it doesn’t.
