As many of you know I have recently been dipping into the Yoga pool, and letting its cool, pristine waters wash over me twice a week. It has been a very challenging experience. In fact, if you listen very carefully you can hear the faint lament of my aggrieved ligaments, and the nattering hum of tendons pulled tighter than the skin on Angelina Jolie's face.
I'm still working on mastering the various poses, and as is typical of issues that have dogged me in the past I am probably overly concerned with doing the poses perfectly correctly. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. You're only going to get the most out of this activity if you're doing it properly, right? So in an all too typical feat of self punishment, I've settled on a simple (read: foolish and counterproductive) way to determine whether I'm doing any single pose correctly. I ask myself, “Am I currently in extreme physical pain and discomfort?” and if the answer is no, then I assume I'm not doing the pose right.
Probably not the best approach, eh? That's what I thought. I'll have to work on that.
Here's another thing that bothers me about Yoga, and this has to do with the instructor. Look, if you're giving instructions to make a pose more challenging just fucking say so, okay? Don't be using these weasel phrases like...“For increased emphasis try...” or “A deeper focus can be had by...”
Just give us the straight dope on this stuff and say “If you want it to hurt WAY worse try...” or “If you don't want to be able to comb your hair tomorrow try this...”
Increased emphasis.... Increased physical therapy. It's not the same thing Miss Yoga instructor.
1 comment:
Kudo's to you for even doing yoga. They had us do a bit of yoga in massage school and I always dreaded the days. Comfort, relaxation, and increased flexibility were things promised, and I have to be candid here: NEVER DELIVERED. Now, to be fair, we only did yoga a handful of times and I had a bad attitude towards it 99.9% of the time. I'm a very cranky yoga participant. Yoga is considerably harder than running in my opinion.
So....to end my rant I would again like to say kudo's to you for doing yoga, and better yet, sticking with it. If we are lucky to see 90 you will be the one touching your toes while I hobble around on a cane muttering obcenities about my aching joints.
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