What yoga has taught me

I just came home from my last yoga for athletes class at the Lewiston YWCA.

I’m sad to see it end. The class was Wednesdays, hump day, and really broke up my week. Terry was a great teacher, and I really enjoyed spending time with my classmates. I’m sure I’ll see them around at track and races, but I’m sad that it’s time to move on.

Before this class, I had not done much (any) yoga before. My sister bought me a yoga set for Christmas last year, and it sat in my closet collecting dust. I really knew nothing about yoga.

And, OK, I’ll say it: in the back of my mind, I was a yoga skeptic. I visualized the cliches when I thought of yoga — a trendy thing that hot trendy 20- and 30-somethings do.  I’d see the pictures of cute girls in cute yoga pants balancing in crazy poses in certain athletic clothing catalogs and think:

  • a) I don’t really have the physique or coordination to do yoga anyway,
  • b) overtly spiritual or religious practices makes this recovering Catholic uncomfortable, and
  • b) it’s not really a workout … really?
You know where this post is going. I was wrong. On all three fronts.
To the first: That was the reason why I didn’t want to start running. I knew all the reasons why I should, but the picture of me hauling my fat ass down the street woulds stop me dead in my tracks.
I’m so glad I got the fuck over that. You know what? Everyone looks dumb the first time they do anything. So embrace your dumb-looking-ness. Own it. One day, you’ll know what you’re doing, and you can appreciate that it wasn’t easy getting there.
To the second: That’s part of what I loved about this class with Terry. It was really focused on being in tune with your body. About listening to your physical condition, after your mental condition dominates your focus 99 percent of the time. We talked about using breathing to bring our focus back to our bodies. There were no funny terms to learn or strange pose names that didn’t make sense.
To the last: Yoga is such a great workout when you need it to be. I focused on running a marathon for the last 4 months and even though I am pretty fit in some ways, yoga makes evident quite quickly the ways that I am not fit.  Some poses require core strength and balance that I just do not posses — but I’m working up to it. Though most of these classes have stayed on the deep stretching side because many of us were recovering from marathons, there have been some classes where I have woke up the next day as sore as if I had done weight training the day before.
The reason why you should really be sold on yoga?
Have you ever had a massage that was just amazing? The masseuse just needed to touch the right place, stretch the right tendon back in the smallest adjustment, and it made whatever tightness you had been feeling completely disolve?
Yoga is totally like that. Only without the masseuse.
Tonight we did a (hard) series of ab workouts in the boat pose. Afterwards, Terry had us put our blocks behind out backs, lying on the floor with our knees up. And that reverse stretch on my lower back was the greatest feeling in the world.

It never ceased to amaze me in the 9 weeks of the class that I would feel a certain tightness when I started and Terry would then direct us through a pose that stretched it out in a way that was completely unlike anything I had ever expected and was completely satisfying.

🙂

I read somewhere early in my training, probably in Runners’ World, that yoga and running didn’t go together because runners didn’t need to be that flexible. Um, well, I don’t really know about that. But I know that yoga has tremendously helped my left hamstring/knee pain, and its also helped me with focus — on my form, on my effort, on my posture. Yoga makes me feel better when I run, and it makes me feel better when I sit at a desk all day. It’s definitely going to stay a part of my fitness regimen and daily practice.

Terry isn’t coming back to Lewiston, but she is starting a yoga clinic in Freeport. I can’t wait to see what she has to offer, and I hope that I can go back to yoga classes again soon.

Pattie Reaves

About Pattie Reaves

I'm a new mom and renegade fitness blogger at After the Couch. I live in Brewer with my husband, Tony, our daughter Felicity, and our two pugs, Georgia and Scoop.