Outside Practice December

I went to the Yoga Flow on Tuesday morning again with Betsy. I really like the way that her class flows (hence the name I guess!) It is perfect for me in the morning. My RA makes it really difficult to function in the morning but this class really helps me loosen up my stiff joints and makes my symptoms less severe. If I had the time I would love to practice everyday, but I can only go to the studio once or twice a week. I also really love that Betsy rubs oils on everyone's shoulders at the end of the class. They always smell fantastic and it is perfect while laying in corpse pose!

Continuing Yoga

I found a studio called the Laughing Buddha in West Deptford, NJ by my house. Since I am done Stockton after this semester I plan on still practicing Yoga at home. The woman there was named Mia and she is a certified teacher. I made sure to ask all of the questions that Laurie told us about in the beginning of class! This studio offers a few classes most of them are Bikram and they offer a Hot Vinyasa which I am interested in. Even though we did the bikram sequences in class I am very interested in trying a real class.

I really enjoyed taking this class it has helped me realize that I can practice yoga to help with my RA symptoms. I will be looking into Ayurvedic Medicine for my RA as well. I feel as though Yoga is something that I can do for the rest of my life. Being healthy is really important to me and if I countinue practicing I am sure that I will see positive outcomes from it.

This class has also made me appreciate yoga as a spiritual practice. All of the information given about the spritual aspect of Yoga has made me realize that it is more than just a way to keep your pant size down!

Outside Practice November

I normally go to the Monday night Technique classes with Laurie. I can really tell a difference when I am doing breath work the wrong way and when I am doing it the right way. I feel that the postures are easier to get into when I am breathing the way I should be. This class is always full of people everytime I go which is how I know that it is a good class to be in. The Technique class really helps me understand the postures better and because they are held a little longer than usual it gives my body time to adjust into a posture.

Outside Practice for November

I went to a Yoga Flow at 9:15 AM on Tuesday. I was having a hard time with my breath work and trying to keep it up for the entire class. I knew something was wrong when I started to black out, see spots and got really cold. I had to sit down on my mat for a few seconds to gain back my equilibrium and make sure that I was able to continue. After about 30 seconds I was good to go again! I really don't know why this happened though. My only guess was that because we kept swan diving then going into forward bend and all the way up again. Also, I had just woke up not too long before I went to class so I dont think my body reacted very well with all of the movements.

Outside Practice

I have been attending the Yoga Technique classes on Monday's with Laurie and I feel like I am starting to gain some strength in my upper arms! I have tested this by finally being able to do a chataranga ( I know I butchered the spelling pretty bad) without struggling for once. I am really happy about this! Plus I think I finally understand how to do them correctly instead of just flopping on the ground. When I left this class I was feeling really good, my arthritis wasn't bothering me and everything felt really great. The breath work that we were using that day also made me feel really great while moving into postures. We would inhale and then pause at the top of the inhale and then exhale kind of like a yawn with no control. The next day however, my legs were a little sore because I hadn't worked those muslces like that in a while!

Hatha Yoga

In class today we did a few asanas from the Hatha Yoga Pradipika. According to these texts it is supposed to lead to spiritual evolution if it is practiced everyday for 12 years. Some of these postures were difficult and when they were described it was difficult to picture how they were supposed to be performed. I found it quite odd that this particular kind of yoga can bring certain powers and improper practice can lead to the misuse of these powers. Overall, I dont really know what to think about this type of yoga but Im sure if I look more into I could make some sense of it.

Viniyoga Practice

We did a Viniyoga practice in class with Laurie. This practice was focused on head, neck , back and shoulders. When I went into the class that day I had slept wrong the night before on my neck and doing this practice help loosen the tension that I had. This practice also had a lot of cobras in it and by the end of it my triceps were feeling a bit like jello because I dont normally get to work that muscle group very often! I did really like the pace that Laurie set the class at she said it was more of an intermediate pace because of the way we controlled our breath during the postures. We used a count of inhale for 5 and exhale for 5 seconds. I liked the way that this type of breathing felt, I felt very controlled and felt like I was more aware of the way the each posture felt.

Outside practice

I did Yoga Flow with Andee tonight and we did a lot of breath work in the beginning. First she made us do breathing in and out of the opposite nostrils which just made me realize how stuffy my nose was! Next we worked on pushing the belly button into the spine when exhaling and doing it very quickly. My lower back started to hurt, but Andee explained that this was because the organs were being compressed into my back and an adjustment would be to try to hold onto the lower back while doing this. She also talked a lot about the bhandas ( locks) and how important it is to keep them aligned while doing certain postures.

I had a really great (maybe even enlightening) moment tonight while in tree posture. It only lasted a few seconds but I was concentrating really hard on keeping my balance and staring at a tile on the ceiling and for a second I felt like I was floating I had no thoughts in my head and everything felt really light and airy. I felt like there was no floor underneath of me and it felt like a moment of bliss. It was a really great feeling and I definitley felt differently after practice tonight. When I came back my roomates said that I had a glow about me that I normally dont have! It was pretty nice.

Outside Practice

I went to the Yoga Technique class I really like going to these because it allows me to correct the posture because they are held for a longer period of time. Lately when I have been practicing I am waking up a little sore the next day. I would really like to start practicing everyday, but I have a crazy schedule so it is hard for me to find time to get to the studio everyday. I noticed that there are a lot mixed ages in this class also. I feel like a lot of the older men and women are there for therapeutic reasons and that a lot of them have an illness or arthritis and are trying this as a method for treatment. I mean I could be totally wrong but that is what I am starting to observe.

Iyerngar

In class we did a form of yoga called Iyengar Yoga. I noticed that the postures were held a little longer than normal because this kind of yoga focuses mainly on correct body alignment rather than just getting into a posture just to say you did it. I noticed that I paid more attention to how my body felt in each posture moreso than any other kind of yoga practiced. One posture in particular was the warrior pose. It made me feel more aware of my leg mucles and in a away I felt that it sort of awakened muscles that had not been used in quite some time! I also noticed that we did a lot of hip opening excersices and that really made me feel really limber afterwards.

I have started to notice that if I do not practice yoga a few times a week that my body feels like it isn't connected (it's a weird feeling that is hard to describe!) I start feeling stiff and like things aren't moving as fluently as I would like them to.

Outside Practices

I went to outisde practice two times last week at Laurie's studio. I felt great after going two days in a row and I havent been able to make it there at all this weekend because of work and being sick. On Wednesday I went to Yoga Flow with Sharon. We did a posture that she said would work our lymph nodes and chelp clear them out and get rid of the end of summer colds that everyone has. At the end of the class she rubbed some kind of lemongrass oil on our shoulders and feet during shavasana. It smelled really good and the smell also helped enhance my senses when getting out of the corpse pose. When I left that day class I felt really awake and when we stepped outside it had just rained and there was a rainbow in the sky which was so pretty!!

The next class I did on Wednesday was Advanced Vinyasa with Laurie. I couldnt make any other class that day and thought that I would give this class a try, afterall I am always up for a challenge. Needless to say an hour and a half later I was soaked with sweat, slipping all over my mat and felt like I had done the most intense workout of my life except I wasnt sore, which was very surprising! Everyone in that class seemed very fit and were able to do the very difficult postures. I was surprised that I was able to some of the more challenging ones but not the extent that some people could. When the class was over I felt that I had awakened muscles that hadn't been put to use in a very long time and it made me feel really refreshed and more aware of my body. I truely felt different after taking this class, it wasn't a bad feeling it was more of a feeling that I accomplished something that I was really nervous about doing because it was an advanced class. I realized that I have potential to do anything I put my mind to and in a way it was enlightening.

Bikram Sequence

This week in class (9/22) we did the Bikram Sequence. Going into this I was really excited because I have heard a lot of great things about this type of yoga. Overall, I feel that I did reasonably well. I think that I would have been able to move more and go deeper into a posture had it been the 105 degrees. I am still interested in doing a Bikram class and I am looking into the classes that Diane teaches in Margate if I ever have time to! I really proud of myself that I could actually do some of the more difficult postures...it was a nice self esteem boost!

The one thing I wasnt too crazy about were the mini-savasanas in between. I got a little annoyed with the laying down, sitting up flipping to the front of the mat and so on. That I could do without, but I can understand why they are needed to rest the body between each posture.

After we finished I felt stronger and my legs definitley felt a little jello like! I guess I used muscles that I forgot were there! I was more aware of my back and there was a difference in my posture which made me feel strong when I walked.

I think that I will definitley try to get into a real Bikram Studio sometime in the near future. Hopefully while I am still taking this class so I can blog about it!

First Outside Practice Impression

I guess you could say that I am no newcomer to Yoga but I don't consider myself a beginner either...I feel I am somewhere in the middle but not sure what to call it. I have always dabbled in the practice of yoga but never consistently did it. I am finally really excited to start practicing on a regular basis. I took this class because I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis last year. I heard that yoga is a really effective way to relieve some of the symptoms associated with this disease. I have decided I am going to try to practice 3-4 times a week and see what happens...

My first impression of yoga was enlightening. I had finally found something that I truely enjoyed and felt really good doing it. The first outside practice I did for this class I went to Gentle Yoga with Rebecca at Yoga Nine. I had been to this class before but I figured I would try to start anew and look at it as my first real yoga class.

To be honest I was really surprised that this particular gentle yoga class was so intense. I believe it was a splits class so we needed all kinds of boulsters and blocks, which I was not familiar with. I don't think I had any difficulty during the class with any of postures. I am pretty flexible so most postures I can get into with little effort. I will say that by the end of the class I was sweating heavily because the temperature in the room was somewhere near 90 degrees. So by the end of the class I was slipping all over my mat. The overall class seemed to have the same issues I had with the heat but I found that it made me move better.

Evertime I finish a class I feel refreshed and most of the time I end up taking a nap afterwards but after I wake up I feel renewed and have a different outlook on things. It helps me remain calm and controlled.