Sivananda Yoga

After practicing Sivananda yoga this week, I have come to really enjoy this type of yoga class for a couple of reasons. First, I like how slow paced and repetitive this class is. Many of the poses we practiced involved a lot of positions that required at least some degree of flexibility. However, at the same time while holding each of the poses, it is important that for each pose the concentration of the four counts of breathe are not lost. This particularly made me enjoy this class because as I was holding each pose, I would really try to think about each body part and how it felt while holding it. Whether it would be a severe stretching sensation or a relaxing meditation feeling, I seemed to really understand which parts of my body were fully integrated. Additionally, many of the 12 poses executed required a great deal of strength, coordination, patience, and almost invited a challenge. For example, the crow pose is a position that will require patience, time, and diligence to learn. Because I love a challenge, this particular pose made me want to master it because it entails much more than what meets the eye. Sivananda yoga, like many other yogas, I feel as though requires an eye-body coordination technique. Because I have been doing gymnastics for such as long time, I feel as though I can relate to this type of  practice for that reason.  I had originally thought that Bikram yoga would have been my favorite and that nothing would top it, but I really feel as though Sivananda yoga has become my top favorite yoga practice.

Yoga as a Lifestyle and Culture

Yoga is becoming more popular throughout the West. Personally, I see more and more people talking about how they have heard so many good things about yoga and that they really want to try it out for themselves. Everywhere you go there are flyers and advertisements about new yoga studios opening up in the community. My own mother for instance, recently just brought it up to me about how she would like to try it out. This was surprising to me because she out of all the people in the world would be the last person who I would expect to do yoga. To begin with, traditional yoga, unlike western yoga, doesn’t have the “pop” sounding names to them. For example, if you were a middle aged woman in America, which yoga title class sounds more appealing to you; Viniyoga and Ashtanga  or yoga slim and hot yoga? I believe yoga in the west became so popularized because of the way it is advertised to draw people in through the use of “pop” culture.  As a “pop” culture in the West, it seems as though yoga is portrayed by young, slim women who drink fit tea and who wear tight colorful workout clothes. I believe it is important to understand where yoga comes from, the history of it and the purpose of it before an individual decides to dedicate some of their time to it so that way they can get the full benefit of what yoga truly has to offer.

Although I believe that it is a good thing that yoga has become so mainstream, I also believe it is important that Westerners do not dilute the traditional uses and process of yoga. Everyone has their own individual outlook on yoga, but the effect of yoga in the west can become tainted. Many people may become so obsessed with the physical practice of yoga that if it somehow became a burden to do it, it would most likely bring us grief when we aren’t able to do it anymore. Our attachment to yoga, I believe, is much more different then how traditional yoga has meant it to be.  Yoga is meant to change our perspectives, our bodies, and our minds through the use of calming, connecting, and understanding the deepest part of ourselves. That being said, when people firmly and only establish yoga as a pop culture, the latter statement becomes irrelevant to western practitioners. The purpose of yoga for them isn’t based off of traditional beliefs anymore, but rather a more dismantled shaping of what westerns belief yoga is. 

Yoga as Healing (medicine)

Yoga is seen as a healing practice in my practice space through many ways. First, it all depends all on whether or not you are practicing as a group or individually. Additionally, I feel as yoga can be seen as a healing practice for me both mentally and physically. Personally, yoga provides me with these physical healing abilities by being able to push myself in poses and holding them for some period of time. By doing this continuously week after week, my body is able to adapt to these positions which therefore allows me to improve my flexibility and work on any limitations that I have previously had. For example, although I practice at once a week with a teacher who is certified I also try to do yoga every morning as a part of my daily routine because I noticed a couple a different things. After exercising vigorously the day before, yoga helps me cool down my muscles and helps them stretch out more so that way I am not as sore afterwards. For someone like me who always has a racing mind and is always stressed about the next step, yoga provides me with a mentally healing ability by allowing me to become in tune with my mind, body, and soul all at once in order to help me forget about any worldly problems for about an hour. Yoga allows me to take every racing thought I have, and slow it down so that way I can analyze each problem out. It is hard to explain, but I believe yoga has a calming reaction on the brain. I am able to tune into each pose while tuning out everything around me which gives me a sense of healing in the mind. To add onto the physically aspects of healing that yoga has an impact on, I have actually noticed a drastic difference in muscle tension over the course of the weeks since I have been practicing. I am on my computer for about eight to nine hours a day doing homework. You could imagine what this does to the upper back; putting a great strain on the muscles between your shoulder blades. I have also had problems with this. My muscles would hurt so bad that I would often ask people to jab their elbow into my back. However, after practicing yoga I noticed that this pain had vanished. Not even a slight pain. And the more I do yoga (every day versus once a week) the more relaxed my back muscles feel.

Because I rarely do yoga at an actually studio, but rather on Stockton’s campus I do not feel that  this is communicated in a class session, but rather it is something that you the individual must try to find and analyze yourself. I believe that I am able to understand that yoga can be used as a medicine by the way my mindset is before entering class. For example, if my intention is to try to revitalize energy throughout my entire body while clearing my mind of all that is negative, I can do this because I, as an individual, have the power to do this. I believe yoga is what you make it out to be. According to Novotney (2009) article on Yoga as a practice tool she explained that yoga can improve not only your overall physical fitness, but your lung capacity as well. For  someone who used to smoke, after reading this I always try to go into practice with a positive mindset that yoga can and will help me over come addiction to nicotine. So far it has had a great impact. When I am practicing, I mostly try to concentrate on my lungs and see how much capacity and control I have over them. After weeks of practicing, I can say that I have seen an improvement on how much more air my lungs can hold and the duration of how long I can hold it for as well.

Nine out of ten times, yoga almost always makes my well-being feel so much better. I have become so interested in what yoga has to over that I typically go outside each morning (depending if it's warm or cold outside) and practice what I have learned from class. Throughout the day, I generally feel a decrease in  stress, worry, tightness, anxiety, irritability, and an increase in positivity, flexibility, creativity, relaxation, and surprisingly an increase in concentration.