True to my word, yesterday morning I got up in the 5 o'clock hour and took the bus downtown to a yoga class before work. Even though my track record for early morning exercise is abysmal, I had hopes this might be a great thing for me, if I could just stick with it.
After one class, I'm sorry to report, I don't feel very confident that its a great thing for me. To say nothing of my ability to stick with it, that's not even the issue. The class itself nearly killed me, and I am only being a little dramatic. It was billed as "all levels", but it was not for beginners. The instructor was super impressive and tried to be helpful. But the pace from pose to pose was grueling, pretty much non-stop, bing-bang-boom, for an hour straight. The room temperature was at 95 degrees. Fifteen minutes in, I was shaking and seeing spots. Concentrate on my breathing? I was lucky to be breathing at all. It was damn near a miracle I lasted a full hour, it was that hard.
To be honest, it wasn't the class I was looking for. It's not about shying away from a challenge, because I believe I could improve with time. In addition to a bit of strength training, I was hoping for a more slow-paced, stress-relieving yoga. You know, with the breathing and the meditating and the Enya-playing and what not? Yeah, that is not what this was. This, for me, was stress inducing. Not the direction I want to be going in. At another time in my life, the death-march yoga I did this morning might be great for me. But not right now. I need to learn the poses slowly, really be able to hold them, focus, stretch it out and get the form down. I want to linger on my breathing and have the time to think about how I feel. I do want to feel the burn. I do not want to only feel intense, non-stop hour-long burning.
I'm frustrated, because its the only class offered at a time and place that works in my schedule. At the very least, I can commit to stretching out more and better on a daily basis and maybe even getting up for my cardio before work once or twice a week. That doesn't require getting on a bus in the 30 degree darkness, so I should be able to handle it, right? I'm kind of back to the drawing board here, but I am glad that I got up this morning and gave it a real try.
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2 comments:
sorry to hear about that:(
Wow! That's insane. I can only imagine the kind of people who actually go to a military-style yoga class that early in the morning consistently! Is there a YMCA by you? I went to a yoga class once at the Y and almost fell asleep because it was so incredibly relaxing - it was exactly like what it sounds like you want. I try to do DVD-workouts, but when it's hard to stick with it - especially if an exercise gets too hard, then I just quit. At least in a class I'm too embarrassed to just sit on my mat unless I absolutely have to. Anyhow, I'm really impressed that you even got up at 5 am to try this - you're a star in my eyes just for that!:)
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