My Yoga Experience Coming into this class, I didn’t really have any expectations for it. I’d heard of yoga but I’d never really practiced it seriously, so I knew very little about the experience. However now that it’s over, my opinion of yoga has changed drastically from the ignorance I had towards it before. After having practiced every week and gone through so many different practices, along with the information from class, yoga has become something lack-luster for me. I do like the practices, I like to exercise and stretch for sure, but learning how commodified yoga in the west has become has taken away from the experience as a whole. It feels like I’ve been lied to, because yoga portrayed itself as something spiritual, as something healing, and as someone who suffers from mental illness and has many friends that love yoga, I was interested. Specifically the Iyengar Yoga practice that we did, I really enjoyed. However, learning later that Iyengar was one of the proponents to the s
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week 11/24 This week I again used a youtube video on Iyengar yoga. However, as much as I like the actual exercise of going through the motions of Iyengar, I feel like I can’t get deeper now knowing how commodified it has become. It’s really lost is luster for me, it just seems so inauthentic that all of the spiritual bullshit they speak of feels so forced. I guess you could say that yoga is similar to meditation. You need the dual focus of movement of the body and the breathing. So in that sense it’s comparable to meditation. However I feel as if meditation and yoga are two different things. Maybe it’s because I’m a novice, but when I’m sitting down and meditating it feels much different then doing yoga postures. I also feel as if the purpose of meditation is to be still, and to focus on creating oneness of mind rather than going through yoga postures. Yoga is also a group activity, and I feel like meditation at least for me is something that requires solitude. On top that, maybe my
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Journal for week 11/19 This week I once again meditated for 45 minutes. It’s been an extremely stressful week and I’m bone tired. My mind is full of anxiety about school, family, and friends, and I just didn’t have it in me to practice a yoga poses this week. However I don’t think that mediation should be counted out of yoga, because the sitting poses are more traditional than the standing poses. Personally I used to associate yoga with purely postural yoga, but now honestly my favorite kind of yoga is just meditation. The practice itself really relaxed me, as I focused on simply meditating, it was really freeing to just have my mind cleared of all thoughts. Despite this, it took me about 15 minutes to really get into the meditation because so much has been going on. The practice space didn’t really matter to me too much honestly, I feel like practicing at home has taken so much out of the class for me. It simply is not the same as it would have been if we’d been able to make real li
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Blog post for Oct 22 This week I used 1 hour Vinyasa Flow For Flexibility - 60 min Intermediate Yoga by Yoga with Kassandra. I'm not gonna lie, the constant movement in this made me die a little bit inside after finishing the whole hour. I'm so severely out of shape, but I did the whole 60 minutes this time with only one break for water so I'm genuinely really proud of myself. One thing I noticed about this yoga sequence is that it didn't really focus on balance as much as Iyengar and Ashtanga which both have multiple poses that make you stand on one leg and do some very complicated stretches. As stated in the title, its for flexibility and I definitely need to start practicing every day if I want to be able to successfully do all of these poses without having to do an easier version of the pose. I've noticed that many yoga practices preach of it's healing properties, whether it physical or mental. I've heard that sometime through practice people with spont
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Blog post for Oct 8th This week I didn't have much time for yoga, so I used 30 minutes practice of Iyengar Yoga for beginners to intermediates by Yogadotin. I really enjoyed the thorough workout that Iyengar provides in such a short period of time because of it's constant movement. It made me feel like I was still challenging myself even despite my time shortage. My favorite pose was when I had my back on the ground and my legs up the wall in a 90 degree angle. I've actually been told to use this pose before for my back if I ever have back pain, and it really helped stretch out my back muscles. Specifically for Iyengar yoga, I can understand how it could be seen as a ritual. In Iyengar, it is a set amount of poses that are repeated every class. Although there are variations in poses, this constant repetition is what rituals are. A repeated cycle of movements that are practiced nearly every day. It's this ritualistic repetition that does intensify the practice experienc
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Journal for Sep 24th Today I followed the video, Total Body Yoga - Deep Stretch, by Yoga with Adrienne. One thing that I noticed with Yoga by Adrienne, is that she doesn't have a set routine like some of the other Yoga practices I've seen like Ashtanaga, which is the same every time. However, that's to be expected out of a home Youtube yoga teacher. I find that classes are clearly more for beginners and people that are getting interested in yoga. Despite this, I really enjoyed the stretches that she moved us through throughout the lesson although she didn't always explain the poses she was moving us into. Many of them were basic like table top and downward dog, but those are the kind of stretched that I personally enjoy because it helps stretch out my bag. One thing I dislike about her practices are that they aren't really challenging enough, and its very clear like I stated earlier, that she is for casual yoga practitioners. Something that I feel as if I'm
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Nov 5 This week we practiced Sivananda Yoga with Jenn Kretzer. One of the things I really enjoyed about this practice is it's breathing exercise, Jenn emphasized the importance of breath in order to feel present during the exercise and it genuinely made me focus much harder on maintaining clean even breaths during the movements. I also found that I had a really easy time keeping up with her main stretches, and completed the entire exercise without having to take a break. It's definitely less intensive then Ashtanga, which required so much commitment to the practice that I was willing to give seeing how I'm much more of casual/beginner practitioner. Something that I've definitely noticed is Yoga's transformation into a pop culture subject. Yoga's rising popularity among social media platforms had made it popular enough for capitalism to run it's course. Like mentioned this week, we see fake gurus, tantric sex practices, etc. All of these things are caused