11/27 Blog

     This week I did another yin yoga practice. Recently, I've been trying to implement a yin yoga practice at least once a week in my routine. I just find it to be the perfect practice when I'm feeling tired or run down and don't feel like doing any other forms of exercise. It's something that's beneficial for my body but without putting too much strain on it or exercising it too hard. I did this practice on Youtube from a teacher named Kassandra. The class was about 40 minutes long. 

    Specifically in this practice I did find a form of meditation. For example, during one of the more intense poses called toe squat, there was a really intense stretch through my feet. Since I don't stretch out my feet as often as I do my other muscles, the stretch was really intense. Instead of trying to fight the discomfort or completely come out of the pose, I tried my best to just breathe through the sensations and stay in the pose as long as I could. I've done toe squats before but this time, since it was a yin yoga practice, I had to hold this pose for three minutes. While it felt like the longest three minutes of my life, I kept bringing my attention back to the breath and it helped me to calm down my body and relax into the stretch. 

    Overall, I think most of the time I do practice a meditative state when I do yoga. Sometimes, if it's more of a power flow I don't really find that meditative state because I'm focusing so much on moving my body from one position to the next. In more physically straining practices I tend to focus more on my alignment and my perseverance throughout the practice instead of focusing on clearing my mind and coming back to the breath. But most times I do feel that I cultivate a more meditative state into my practice. When poses get hard or I want to come out of a pose I bring my attention back to the breath. If I'm holding a more challenging pose like Crow Pose and I feel my body starting to get tired, I bring my focus back to the breath instead of focusing on my body. Even though finding a meditative state while also moving at the same time is challenging, I think I'm slowly starting to get better at it with more practice. 

Toe Sit - Yin - Byron Yoga

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