Daily yoga was always going to be an intensely personal challenge for me, both mentally and physically. Physically because I hadn't done yoga for about three years (despite telling myself over and over that I needed to get back into it) and couldn't touch my toes, and mentally because I knew there would be times where I absolutely did not want to go, or that I would have to force myself to be organized every single week day of September to get up early, pack all my work stuff into my gym bag and head straight from yoga to work in order to sneak through the door at 9am, or take myself away to practice while I was on holiday for the weekend with friends.
All of these things I faced and it was with a considerable amount of glee that I didn't take my gym bag to work this morning, and that I can now I can touch my toes with my fists rather than the very tip of my middle finger.
It was actually very lucky (in hindsight) that my daily yoga challenge coincided with an absolutely insane period at work. I really counted on my one internally focused hour to give myself a kick start and feel calm about the day ahead. It is amazing how difficult it can be to focus solely on your breathing and not let your mind drift to your deadline for that day, or how you were going to be at work until 9pm that night, but once I snapped into my zone everything else melted away for 60 minutes. Brilliant!
I battled with myself constantly. Being a naturally competitive person I was never able to focus just on myself for a whole class. Sneak peaks at my fellow yogis showed just how far I had to go. I tried to celebrate my milestones (like touching my toes for the first time in many years!), but often I caught myself thinking "how the hell is her head touching her knees?" when you could drive a bus through the space between mine. Therein lies the delight and torment of yoga - you constantly see improvement, but someone else can always go longer, deeper, wider, flatter, twistier...
I clearly have very tight hips. So much so that one teacher looked slightly incredulous when I had to sit on two blocks where most other yogis were managing without any. One morning class where I was the only one to show up, the teacher and I spent an entire 60 minutes doing hip opening exercises. I still have a long way to go...
A few proud moments were (obviously) touching my toes for the first time and achieving my first headstand (yes!) without using the wall.
I received so much support from the girls at Yoga Movement. Yun and Coral were incredibly encouraging, offering advice or encouragement and a friendly face first thing in the morning. If you're in Singapore I definitely recommend the studio. It's just as great for the hard core yogis as it is for the weekend (and week day) warriors like me.
A word of advice: if you're just getting back into it, or just starting out, leave Alisha's classes until you're a bit more confident. She's very good, but she loves the physical challenge of pushing limits and I often found myself frustrated in her classes. One 'basic yoga' class with her I actually felt myself getting angry - "how can this be a basic class when I'm trying to bind myself up like a pretzel... and failing miserably?" I think my anger was more a reflection on myself more than anything else. Still, it wasn't a very fun class that one...
A whole month of yoga was a fabulous way to get back into it, giving me the progress I needed to stick with it during the 'I can't touch my toes' phase. I feel much stronger, especially in my core and arms. I'll definitely keep it up, but realistically maybe twice a week, and I'm really looking forward to getting back to my boot camp in October!
October's challenge is going gluten-free. This one is going to be interesting (in the same way that dairy-free was 'interesting' given the amount of support I get at home for these things...) but more on that later!
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| Image from Yoga Movement |
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