Why do people love yoga?

Admittedly, I was one of those people who thought yoga was not really a workout. You sit cross legged. You hike your hips up in the infamous down dog position. You meditate. You might hold a pose. You aren’t doing too much. When I started going to studio classes, I opted for a spin class. It was active. I was burning calories. It was fun. My gym held a game like a bingo card and on the bingo card you had to try different types of classes and try different instructors in order to mark off the board. You could stop at 4 in a row, but a grand prize drawing was only from completing a black out board by the deadline. So me, as a semi competitive person, decided I was going to completely fill my board. I would go to 2 classes in a day sometimes in order to be open track to finish the board by the deadline. A few of the board items were various yoga classes and instructors that mostly taught/led yoga classes.

So I tried a first ever yoga class in the second week of this bingo card. It was called yoga sculpt. It was intense. I never thought yoga was this intense (it was more like hot mat pilates with various yoga poses and it was fast and sweaty). I tried a second yoga class, called Yoga Restore. This one was the type of yoga that I thought yoga was about-you sit still, breathe and kind of meditate. I don’t think I broke a sweat. The third type of yoga class I tried, I felt like three time’s the charm. This was a yoga flow or vinyasa yoga class. This was somewhere in between yoga sculpt and yoga restore. It was a perfect amount of movement where I felt I was breaking a sweat, I could feel my muscles were being worked and challenged, we concentrated on breathing, meditating and we were also taught lessons; things to think about post class.

During class, it was being present on the here and now. It was making adaptions to our bodies based on what we were going through by the time we got to class. We learned that it is okay and also not to worry about what others in the class was doing and not to be frustrated. We only needed to focus on what we were doing now. As the weeks progress though, it is noticeable that you can do more (but it isn’t always noticeable from one week to the next on progress). The more important thing is actually the process; you see the same instructors and peers in the yoga class. You make some friends. A great instructor doesn’t just teach poses, but teaches you the breathwork and lessons, posing questions which make you think about expectations and happiness.

So yoga class, even though I wasn’t initially going to bother trying, ended up being that class that I take the most frequently week after week and I’m so happy and feel so blessed. I use the principles I learned in yoga in my everyday life and at my current job, which I chose due to my yoga class. I feel happy and feel I lead a more fulfilling life overall.