So You Think You’re A Yogi

Imagine you are so relaxed that you can actually feel energy move through your body. It sounds a little dorky, but that is what yoga is for me. Today I’m going to talk about yoga, yeah this is happening. I haven’t been a big fan of yoga or pilates until this past year. I don’t know why I didn’t like it, it was just something about staying still in uncomfortable positions for long periods of time that was really unappealing to me. But now I can say that I actually really like yoga.

Maya and I at camp

Over the summer, at camp, every night my friend, Maya, and I would do yoga in our cabin. Even though it wasn’t a real yoga class (and we were taking ourselves WAY too seriously), we still had such a good time. Eventually, our entire cabin joined in on our late night yoga sessions, and it became a tradition. Near the end of camp, one of my counselors took a period to teach us some yoga. We had all been pretty tense because of camp ending, so it was perfect for us. At the end of the period, we spent a couple of minutes doing a silent meditation. There was nothing special about it, we had done many other meditations before, but there was just something about this experience that was different.

Perfect representation of savasana courtesy 
of www.namasteyogatherapy.com

I didn’t take yoga again until school rolled around, and dance started up again. On Fridays, we had a new class, Conditioning. Conditioning in my mind was hardcore exercises that would kill me for an hour, but this conditioning was completely different. That first Friday class was my very first pilates class, I can honestly say that it did kill me. This class didn’t test my endurance, but it sure did test my strength. At the end of the first day my entire body ached and I didn’t want to think of the fact that I had another class after that. My teacher, Brenda, told us to lay on our backs for savasana. That was when I realized that the silent meditation I had done at camp finally had a name.

Now, I still battle pilates on Fridays, but knowing that there will be savasana at the end makes it all worth it. This is the time of the week that I can finally relax and be relieved that it’s the weekend. I never thought that I was the type of person who would like yoga, but now that I’ve tried it, I’m a lot less tense about almost everything. My challenge for you this week is to try something that you think you would not usually like, maybe running, cooking, or even yoga. You’ll never know you like something until you try it. And with that, I’ll leave you with a quote from Joan Rivers, “I knew I was an unwanted baby when I saw that my bath toys were a toaster and a radio.”

~Rachael