Class #64-66 Yogalicious in Spartanburg with Monica and Marie

I recently went home to Spartanburg to visit my family during Spring Break. Recently, when I am back in my home town, I go check out the local yoga studio called Yogalicious. While it is not the little slice of Nirvana that is Amsa, it is fairly friendly and has its own quirky charms. Spartanburg is putting a lot of effort into revitalizing its downtown and so several older buildings have been re-purposed into different contemporary businesses. Yogalicious is part of this effort and is located inside an old building that I think used to be some sort of factory. It is bright and cheery inside the studio itself, but if you enter from one side of the building, it is like walking through a burnt out husk in some sort of post apocalyptic future. If anyone has seen the movie "9" I think Yogalicious is the kind of sanctuary the little rag people would use to do yoga in and recharge in-between dodging the war machine animals.
Anyways, I went to three very different classes and conveniently enough, learned three good lessons

. The first one was a yoga basics class that I was able to persuade my mom to join me in. I have previously taken classes with my brother and my wife and it is always a really special experience to share yoga with someone you care about. My mom taught me a really important lesson in this class. I often get frustrated when I can not do some of the poses, especially if it seems like everyone else is nailing it. My mom could not do around half of the poses since she was a true beginner and a little out of shape from her hectic life. At the end of the class though, she gave me a hug and told me how excited and happy she was to have done so much in her first class. I may have been stretching my body farther than her, but her heart was definitely opened wider than mine.

The second class I went to was Ashtanga style, fast paced with the heat cranked up. I didn't really learn something new during that class, but I found out something right afterwards that made me re-evaluate some of my foolish earlier decisions. In the yoga basics class I took with my mom, almost everyone was either a little older or out of shape or both. I consider myself to be out of shape also by the way. The instructor gave us fairly basic poses which makes sense given the class composition and the title of the class. However, one person on the mat next to me would consistently do more advanced variations with the instructor's encouragement. I was a little miffed since it was not like these variations were being offered to the class as a whole. Additionally, my cursory evaluation of the student had them pegged as a relative beginner due to appearance and the way they did one of the early poses (I think it was half moon). I really had to struggle to not attempt the more advanced variations even though clearly they were not being offered to me. On one pose, I even did the variation I am used to and was adjusted back into a simpler form. So I found out later that the "student" was actually another instructor at the studio. Even if they had not been though, there are so many things wrong with my attitude and decision making process here. I let circumstances outside my mat mess up what I was doing. I could have hurt myself. I disrespected the instructor by not following her instructions. I also judged someone I don't know based on a quick couple glances and their one momentary wobble in one pose. Judging is a bad practice in general and it was sloppy judgement at that. Lastly, the whole experience impacted my focus not just at the time, but during a subsequent class as well. I don't know if it makes it better or worse, but I know in my head not to do stuff like this. Just got to breath and take advantage of the opportunity the next practice offers.

My third class was a fun one and I didn't act like a petulant toddler, so that's a plus... It was a hour long yoga for lunch kinda standard class with a few neat twists. We had out mats set up as crosses and did a lot of transitions from lunges to straddles thanks to the additional padded space. The instructor, Marie, was very hands on and gave us all a lot of adjustments and opportunities to repeat poses until we made some improvement and could replicate it. We did some asanas a little different than I am used to with an overall emphasis on opening up and never rounding. I don't think I would want it to be the style I always had to do, but as a change of pace and a learning experience it was great. So I learned (or technically had reinforced I suppose) that new experiences can be fun and the more open you are, the more you can learn and enjoy.

So that was my little trip into the land of the licious. I will be back soon with more Amsa and maybe I can even get back to one class at a time...

Class #51-63 With Kimberly, Sara, Anne, Shannon and Eeyore?!

So in case you were wondering, I didn't die or quit yoga. The long delay has been due to two (that's fun to say, try it, due to two, due to two...)factors. Life has been overwhelmingly busy lately and I have been trying to find a way to express some yoga related internal struggles without sounding like either a spoiled brat or Hobbes (the Leviathan author, not the stuffed tiger). Basically, I have some self image problems and a lot of trust issues. Yoga is actually helping with both of those, but the process can sometimes be a painful one. As briefly as possible, I am not a big fan of myself and often feel compelled to compete to "make up" for how inadequate I feel. Of course that does not really fix anything. So even in yoga I find myself really wanting to do flashy poses and beat myself up when I am not making as much progress as I would like. The inconsistency of my body and what poses are available day in and day out is also a source or much frustration. Some days I am able to laugh at myself in a healthy way, mentally shrug at my misplaced priorities and then get refocus. Too many times I find myself glancing around the room and comparing or "competing" with my fellow students. Aside from the obvious physical health risks of pushing too hard to get into a pose I am not ready for, there is a lot of mental damage being done by tying my self worth with what I can do on my mat.

Thankfully, Amsa is a place to grow not only physically, but mentally and even spiritually. I am not going to go into the whole yoga as religion or religion substitute debate right now (though I have thought a lot about it) but I will say that I feel introspection and a careful examination of the choices we make in our daily lives is a logical progression as a person deepens their practice. So basically, I am saying that I have been making some pretty poor yoga related choices, but I am aware of these choices and I am also aware that simply being depressed or angry about those choices is not productive. I have been receiving a lot of good counsel recently and I think some of it is slowly sinking into my head. There is so much more to learn incorporate at Amsa than the asanas. Hopefully I can listen and absorb the wisdom available to me. My inner voice sounds a lot like the eternally pessimistic Eeyore right now, but it is pretty loud in there and who knows what I may find if I can still my thoughts. My wife Amanda recently told me that I am full of Pooh (I can only assume she meant the lovable happy bear. I thought asking for clarification might not be a good idea). Here's hoping that a grand adventure is just around the corner...