Early Days

Today I wrote another piece for my yoga paper. This one is about my beginnings in the practice of yoga.


When I began practicing yoga it was not quite the experience I find it now. The class was always large and I rolled out my mat in the very back of the studio. The light was dim and the music was soft in every class. As I started I learned that yoga was nothing like I had imagined - it was not easy and gentle, it was stessful and made me sore. But somehow I found myself coming back to every single class. At least once every class the teacher reminded us that yoga is a non-competitive practice.

"Easy for her to say," I thoguht in the middle of Extended Triangle pose. My hand was nearly at my knee as I tried to stretch it lower down my shin, with my other arm reaching up in the opposite direction and my feet spread to each side of my mat. The twist was a difficult one for me as I ried to place my back in the same vertical plane as my legs. My body was a series of triangles, but I thought I looked more like a star broken at the waist and falling over. One of the worst parts of this pose was how easy it made it for me to look around at the others.

It is often easy to see others in yoga as perfect. Not all of them, of course, but just one or two are enough to threaten attempts at non-compettion. Lithe bodies gracefully and easily moved into this same pose, and they could move so much deeper than I could. It was easy for the throught "They are so much better" to become lodged in my mind. Giving myself a mental shake I would let the thought pass and focus on my hand pushing into the air.

This scene would repeat throughout my early practices over and over again, almost with every pose. Yoga is an outwardly silent practice, but that just left the mind to take every thought it created and run with it. Mindfulness and meditation are goals, but not goals that are easily strived for. Yoga is a practice of constant learning and constant trying.

The teacher instructed us to move into the next pose, offering several modifications for beginners and advanced yogis - yoga is a sport entirely based on modification. As I reminded myself to not compare with others and focused on my breath, I chose one of the modifications, moving into the best pose for my own body.


-Kat