Journal 12

 

This week is my 12th week of taking yoga classes online. I feel like I have hit a wall with my yoga practices. Finding videos that are not for beginners but also ones that are not too advanced. The majority of the videos on YouTube are for beginners or the western type of yoga, exercise based. Yoga is taught as a spiritual practice in the east but not in the west. My definition of spirituality is a belief in a greater essence that could be taken in a few different ways. For example, one way could be believing in Jesus like the Christians and Catholics do but another is Buddhism. Most religions have a spiritual aspect to them, but one can be spiritually attached to something that has nothing to do with a religion. Spirituality in my practice space is not necessarily a belief in a “higher being” but a connection to the earth and being grounded. The YouTube video for this week is called “Yoga For When You Feel Dead Inside | Yoga With Adriene” by Yoga with Adriene. I specifically chose this video because I was feeling much tired and coffee was not helping me stay awake. Adriene started the practice by sitting on the floor with legs crossed and taking a few deep breaths. During this time, I focused on meditation and trying to clear my mind as much as possible, but it was difficult to concentrate. The next step was spinal flexion by bending forward, bringing your chin to your cheat then straightening out the spine while rocking slightly back and forth with each movement. The first focus was the spine, by moving the spine in each direction you are not only stretching your muscles but also warming up the muscles of the torso. Adriene mentions that moving the torso in a circular motion it massages the visceral organs which then gives the effect of feeling more alive/awake. About 10 minutes into the video or so I stopped meditating because I almost fell asleep during my practice. Keeping my eyes closed only made it worse and I played some songs quietly in the background to help stay awake during practice. Although this practice wasn’t meditation-based but more about waking up and feeling alive, I focused more on the physical practice. Most of the poses were done on the floor and really focused on breathing while slowly performing each one. For one pose that required balancing on the pelvis, I used a pillow as a support to stay balanced and have a cushion for the end of my spine.  The 30-minute video gave me a more awake effect compared to my usual morning coffee. This could have just been a placebo effect or by moving and engaging the muscles releases adrenaline.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9uQbatjZjg


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Final Journal

  Number 14 and final yoga journal. I started the class by only taking one yoga class at Stockton my freshman year of college and now being a senior, my perspective of yoga has changed. At first, I saw it as a ridiculous exercise that was a trend on the west coast, for example, California. Due to the current global pandemic of covid-19, classes at Stockton were converted to be online. This made it impossible to hold live face-to-face yoga sessions and was hard to truly experience what can be. For me, I preferred the meditative aspect of yoga and also the physical as well but not at the same time. The reason I chose to take this course is for my holistic health minor because I am always interested in alternative medicines and practices to heal the body in a natural way. Not everything can be done naturally, there will always be instances where medical intervention is required. This experience of learning and practicing yoga at home has taught me that Yoga can be done without fancy equ
Read more

Week 3

            Week three of online yoga. This week’s class was via a zoom call in class with guest speaker Diane Polli. She walked us through a different kind of yoga called Bikram Yoga. Although she did not perform the poses, Professor Greene showed the class how it was done. For this type of yoga, I’ve noticed that the individual performing it must already have some flexibility. As a beginner, it was not starter friendly and I was not able to fully or correctly perform the positions. In a typical Bikram Yoga studio, those who practice regularly and are familiar with how the class flows, are put in the front to show others how to carry out the positions. Since this class was online and was not available for an in-person setting, I believe it was executed the best it could.           The beginning of the class felt pointless; we started with a breathing exercise to lay out the foundation, but it was just moving my head and arms up and down to me. As we moved on, the positions become more
Read more

Week 4

           Week three of online zoom yoga practice. The guest teacher for yoga practice this week is Amita Bhagat. Anita showed how to do Iyengar yoga. Its practices in 53 countries and is about finder one’s inner self. It takes six to seven years of practice to become certified at the first level; there are multiple levels to Iyengar yoga. It can be analyzed as a ritual because it is an action that an individual repeats on a schedule, whether that be daily to annually. A ritual consists of certain steps be taken at a specific time; one can think of it like a witch’s spell and of course yoga. According to Nevrin, symbols and props with set rules of interaction are rituals but yoga can be explained also in that way. Iyengar himself used his body as a “test subject,” meaning his body was treated in a way that a scientist would perform tests on a lab subject; a “laboratory” Amita said. He would practice most of his life, after a day of teaching he would then spend ten hours practicing for
Read more