Yoga Practice Blog

      This past week I tried an online yoga class intended to help with spine health. I took the class over Youtube from a channel called Yoga with Adrienne and the class was about 45 minutes long. Due to taking most of my classes online, my back has been feeling affected by constantly sitting all day. While I wasn't feeling intense back pain I just felt like my posture wasn't as straight as it used to be and I didn't feel as open through my chest.      I really enjoyed this yoga practice and after the practice I felt so much straighter and refreshed. The class moved relatively slow but I enjoyed it because I could feel my body opening with every posture instead of barreling through the practice and then just feeling good afterwards. I also really liked how she linked every movement with the breath. It felt like with every breath my chest was opening and my spine was growing taller. It felt really good to take care of my back problems before the pain worsened and I felt so

      This was my first time doing Ashtanga Yoga. We did it with Andrew over Zoom and the class was a little over an hour long. I knew going into this practice that it was going to be challenging since we looked at the different series in class. I've been practicing yoga for a couple years now and I've seen other people do the more challenging poses like headstand and I've attempted to do these poses but I don't try to do them often. If I want to explore a bit more or push myself I'll try more challenging poses but for the most part I'm not attempting these Ashtanga poses in my everyday practice.      I liked that this practice was a lot of repetition. I find that when yoga classes have repetition it's easier for me to get into a flow like state. The sequence almost becomes like second nature. Although it was a really challenging practice and I couldn't do most of the postures, it felt like a good way to start off my day. After the class I felt energized

      We took this Iyengar practice with Amita over Zoom for a little over an hour. This was my first time doing Iyengar yoga but I am familiar with BKS Iyengar and his teachings. I knew previously that he was very focused on alignment and anatomy. I also knew that he emphasized the scientific side of asanas and how it benefits the physical body.     I really enjoyed this practice because of the emphasis on the idea that yoga is for everybody. I liked that Amita gave modifications for the poses. For instance, I've never done downward dog on a wall before and even though it felt different, it still felt good in my body. The practice was fast enough where I felt like my body was flowing nicely but it wasn't too fast to the point where I couldn't follow along. After the practice I felt energized and more open in my body than I did before the practice.      The practice space in this setting did promote community in some ways but it's slightly hard to promote community over

      Recently I've attended an hour long yoga class on the beach not too far from my house. The teacher's name was Carrie Godesky and she led a vinyasa class. I've done a class on the beach a couple years ago when I first started doing yoga and I wasn't really prepared for the practice. This time around though I was able to really enjoy it in it's entirety and was able to get into a flow. Normally it's hard for me to get into a peaceful state of mind when I'm out in the environment because I get more distracted by the nature around me instead of focusing on my body, but this time I felt like I really got the most out of this practice.      Some things I liked about this practice was that we started the practice with a sequence to warm up the body. That morning it was pretty chilly out and it felt good to get the body warmed up through movement. I also really liked that Carrie talked about how, even though winter is approaching, it shouldn't be a time wh

           I really liked this Bikram Yoga practice with Diane Polli. I've never done Bikram Yoga before and this was more intense that I would've thought. I liked that the beginning of the practice was building a lot of heat and then slowly we began to relax. I also really liked that we took rests in between postures because I felt like I had more energy to complete each sequence. This was more of a fast paced yoga practice compared to what I'm normally used to but after I felt really energized.      I think that the views of yoga as exercise depend on the practitioner and the culture. For instance, I feel like mainly in the the Western World yoga is largely viewed as a form of exercise. While there are some exceptions to that and some classes in the West do incorporate more spiritual elements, most mainstream classes are focused on the physical asanas. I think in the East there's more of an emphasis on the unity to a higher power through yoga. I also think most practi