Yoga

This week's yoga session was fairly different from our previous meetings. Today Vinaya focused on creating a more energetic session filled with more active poses. We started off with introducing ourselves and stating our spirit animal, all while beating against our chests to every syllable. I won't lie, I found this very odd at first, but the longer I talked and felt the resonance throughout my chest with every beat, the more soothing it became.

It's amazing to know how much you can learn about someone through the animal they chose to represent their spirit. The responses ranged from soaring birds to spitting llamas and grazing cows. I chose a cat to represent my inner self because I long to just take a relaxing nap in the sun, especially with all the work that has been piling up thanks to all my IB classes. I learned this new fact about myself because I never really gave much thought as to how I would represent my spirit. I feel like I gained a deeper connection with who I really am now that I'm devoting more time to myself. I'll now try to set aside a few minutes each day to discover what's underneath all the layers I built to shield myself and to think about who I am as an individual versus what I want society to see me as.

Next, Vinaya introduced us to laughter yoga. We started off with forced giggling and chuckling, but after a few minutes it turned into full-fledged laughter and we only stopped when our sides were heaving and we were struggling to regain our breath. Through this exercise I learned the true importance of laughter in our lives. Since senior year is so stressful and serious, it's important to release all this tension and there's no better way to do it than through laughter (or ice cream).

Vinaya then moved on to challenging us with more aggressive yoga positions.  When she told us to do a handstand against the wall, I thought to myself that there's no way I'll be able to do something so physically demanding and supple. I surprised myself when, less than two minutes later, I was upside-down on my hands. Granted, I wasn't able to hold this pose very long because of my lack of upper-body strength, but I did do it. Slowly, I'm begin to have more faith in my abilities and a greater willingness to try poses that are outside of my comfort zone. There was one pose, however, I could not do because I was worried I would end up snapping my back. I know my limits, and I reached them when we had to bend over backwards (literally). Perhaps in the future I will build up my tolerance to bending my back without the fear of hurting myself, but during this past session I did not want to risk a back injury.

We ended the session with a peaceful pose lying on our backs and feeling like we're sinking into the ground. There's no greater stress-relief than yoga and I hope to incorporate it into my daily schedule instead of just once a week. I would like to see more exercise-oriented poses to strengthen my core, but I do like the mix of relaxing and stretching that we're currently doing.