As I mentioned in my post yesterday, I am starting to dislike Mondays because the fun of the weekend comes to an end, and I am getting Spring fever when we have nice weather on the weekend. But what is helping me get through, is looking forward to my Monday night yoga class. I went to my second week of Yoga class this Monday and it was fantastic! It was even better than the first time! The instructor, Margaret, is very good. I really like her style of teaching and attention to the students. We have a small class of 6 people and tonight there were only 3 of us, so it is a nice intimate size.
This week she incorporated some Yin yoga into our poses. Yin is a practice designed to have you hold a pose for an extended or fixed period of time. This helps you to meditate and stretch the connective tissues around your joints. The typical hold position is for 3 to 5 minutes. For us, since it was our first time doing such a practice, we held our positions for about 90 seconds.
For the beginning we started off sitting and did some neck rolls and warmed up our shoulders, then we stood and did some airplane poses which were great for the shoulders and the arms. I felt the burning in my muscles. After that we moved to the floor to do a Sphinx pose in the Yin style. Then we did some Cat/Cowl with a twist and then a Child pose to open up the spine. Then we did more floor work lying down and opening up the hips and doing hip bridges and spinal twists.
After working on the floor we stood up and did shoulder rolls, crossing the arms in front and back to loosen them up. Then we did more shoulder rolls with our hands touching the tops of our shoulders. Then we did side bends to stretch our sides and backs. We put our hands on our lower backs and did pelvic circles. It was a lot of fluid movements to wake up the body in certain areas, especially when we sit most of the day.
Then we worked on our balance. We stood on one foot and kicked our legs to the front, then swung our legs to the side for the hip abductors. We did this on each leg to ensure balance on both sides. Then we did ankle circles for both feet and moved back down to the floor, put our legs out in front of us and pointed our toes to the ceiling to stretch out our lower body. This is called the Dandasana pose
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To wrap up the class, we laid on the floor in what is called the Savasana pose (the corpse pose). This puts the body back into a neutral position. We began with our knees bend, then lowered them to the floor, feet hip width apart, then we pointed our toes together and then apart to release the tension in our body. It is important to be comfortable in this position because we were going to remain there for several minutes. While quieting the body physically the instructor also spoke to us to have us be aware of every part of our body that she calls out. It is important to soften the root of the tongue, the space between your eyes. Let the eyes sink into the back of your head, release the brain to the back of the head. It’s all about being still and quiet and ending the class by thanking your body for what it has done for you during the day. Giving it quiet time to rest and recover and rejuvenate. It is one of my favorite parts of class and I hate to have to get back up again to go home!
I really enjoy Yoga and want to do it every day; but in reality, I will only do it in a classroom environment. I have the dedication to my running routine; but for a class that has more structure, such as yoga, I need someone directing me what to do, which order to do it in. The shoulder roll exercises and the airplane stretch exercises are something I’d like to do a few time a week to work on my arm muscles and opening up my shoulders from hunching them over a computer all day.
I am also going to work with my kids to help them unwind at the end of the day. When I got home from my class last night I had them do a few stretches with me, until their attention span wore off! My daughter is very interested in it. My son can’t sit still for more than 6 or 7 minutes. But getting them engaged and trying new things with me is part of the fun.
