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. 

Yoga practice as community

After attending class this week, I noticed that my practice space does promote a sense of community.  After reading Smith and Nevrin I began to connect how my space contributes to more of a community sense. A sense of community can be felt during practice when a group of people come together for the same purpose in order to practice together. A sense of community, according to Nevrin, is felt in such a way because “we are affected to and respond to each other’s movements and emotions as well as bodily expressions and we enter shared rhythms together.” Once we start to feel the sense of empowerment as a group, this could contribute to that sense of community. A sense of community could be developed when we as a group practice the physical yoga, but also the “emotional intimacy and nearness” of yoga as Nevrin pointed out. It is important to feel a sense of community interaction among the practice because it will help everybody feel more at ease during the practice. The importance of practicing as a group can help each individual attain more of a stress free environment. As Nevrin also pointed out, the social interaction of yoga creates an “escape attempt from an individual’s own life.”  

            Creating a sense of community is important for the studio because it may contribute to more of an enlightened practice. For example, Pattabhi Jois links his practices to heat. He believes that the more internal heat being produced, the more of an effort that is produced from it. The ritual heat produced, according to Smith, is “linked to personal transformation and spiritual refinement.” By coming together as a community and practicing Ashtanga yoga, we are able to come together and create that sense of discipline, or tapas, as a community by generating each of our internal heat. Therefore, creating more of a sense of a shared community. The purpose of the tapas is to purify and strengthen the body through the use of sweating it out. The more people that show up to a practice, maybe the more heat that is generated throughout the room; creating more of a sense of purification as a community.

Personally I feel a small sense of belonging to the community in which I practice at which is at Stockton. However, I feel as if the groups that come together to practice it here are very small, and, many like myself, inexperienced still. However, after doing an Iyenger class on Tuesday and getting a sense of this type of yoga, I can understand how one can feel that sense of community bond. 

Practice as Ritual

Based on the article by Nevrin, my yoga practice can be analyzed as a ritual through each Nevrin’s points of consciousness, rehabituation, flow, embodiment  and kinesthesia. Once the mind is at peace and is at ease during the practice, being able to change the physical body seems to come easier. After getting use to changing positions and breathing movements together to the point where it comes naturally, I feel that our movement and attention to movement does produce more of a sense of calmness and creates a deeper understanding of our surroundings. The more I practice, the more I feel comfortable in my own skin doing the set of postures. Subsequently, after practice it reflects how I feel of myself on a day to day basis. This is where I believe kinesthesia comes into play because it provides us with a “less rigid sense of self.” Although I have only been practicing for some time now, I have felt more of a sense of full embodiment meaning I see myself as a “full human being”, or what I like to believe is what it feels like to feel like a “full human being.” The flow of yoga practice is definitely something that will take me time to get used to. But this element of yoga is definitely one component that makes the yoga experience seen as a  ritual. To be able to master the flow ritual as a function of the practice means to be able to practice yoga with full mind and body intact without thinking about either of them simultaneously. This can be difficult if you are a beginner to yoga because most of our attention is set on understanding on how to perfect the postures properly.

This ritual function can change the nature and intensity of my yoga practice because it can allow to reach certain aspects that I could not otherwise reach if I was engaging in another form of physical activity. For example, hyper-focus is something that I would rather enjoy being able to do in my yoga practice, but I feel as if this would not be attainable even for the most experienced. Once certain qualities are mastered in yoga such as perfection of breathing, postures, meditation, I believe it will make the overall impact of my yoga experience mean that much more and make me feel much more intact with my mind and its ability to focus greatly on what it going on around me.

Being able to undergo the ritual progression  of separation, transition, and incorporation is what makes yoga so much more than just a physical practice. As humans, we really don’t know much about how our bodies are actually capable of. Practicing yoga helps us to empower these embodied experiences. Although I have only been practicing for a few weeks, I can feel a positive difference in how my body moves. I focus on my movement which in turn makes me realize that this movement that I am accomplishing is just one of many forms that can shape my mind, body, and energy into a completely different realm that lies outside of just the physical aspects of it all.

After watching the short documentary Ashtanga, NY, many people would come to Pattabhi Jois’ classes because the session was so ritual based. Emotionally, it seemed as though these people enjoyed the increased sense of community relation within each other. They had stated how amazing it feels, even in a hot room, how everyone is doing the exact same thing at the exact same time for the exact same purpose; maybe it created a sense of “shared community” among people who have like minds. The way he taught his classes seemed to heal those who never though they were capable of doing much. For example, one lady who was in two car accidents had broken her hip twice and had a few knee surgeries was able to indulge in embodiment so much that she was able to experience the health of her body again going back to normal. 

Yoga as a Physical Culture

Yoga is framed way more than just exercise. Yoga postures may be a part of exercise and may help shape your body into ways that you may appreciate, but yoga runs deeper than strengthening our core muscles. It can be seen more as an expression and connection of our emotions. Yoga, said by many yogis, is the union and interdependence of mind, body, and spirit. Unlike other exercises, yoga can frame balance in our bodies by increasing spirituality, strength, and flexibility.

When practicing yoga, we are able to stay in the present moment. When we do other exercises such as running or Zumba we are putting strenuous effort on our bodies all in an effort to sweat as much as we can in order to burn as many calories as possible. Strenuous exercise may be a great stress reliever for some, but it does not compare to the empowerment that yoga is able to give us. Personally, if I do not push myself into oblivion while working out in the gym, I feel horrible. But I notice with yoga, because it is a slow practice, I also have more of a positive attitude after coming out of class.

After practicing the Bikram yoga this week I notice that in many ways yoga can empower you. Yoga empowers us by being able to focus internally and to tune everything out. When we out listening to our bodies, and slowly pushing into these postures, we are empowering ourselves by doing things we never thought we could. Personally, I have a short fuse and just about everything annoys me. After finishing this class, I noticed a change in my behavior. I felt a lot more controlled and less tense. To be able to control levels of concentration, relaxation, and to decrease levels of stress is empowerment.  

After reading chapter 3 in 21^st Century Yoga, I came to understand what the author was talking about when they discuss how they perfected self-loathing. I wanted to connect this journal with a segment that was written in the book because I feel as if the two are interrelated. After practicing yoga for some years, she said that it was able to completely change her perspective on herself in a positive and uplifting way. She stated that, “my practice taught me how to respect and nurture my body... I moved from disdain and disappointment to gratitude and appreciation” (p.36). Yoga is empowering because it has the ability to change the way we want to see ourselves and to be able to redirect our self-actualization. 

Discussion Two

This week after going to yoga class in the TRLC at Stockton, I made sure I paid extra close attention to what it is that makes my practice space a “sacred space.” Personally, I believe any place could be turned into a sacred place, but it all depends on your state of mind that you are in at that time. I make sure that before I go into class that I clear my mind of any negative thoughts that may have just occurred or have been occurring throughout the week. A sacred space begins with you. However, other physical aspects inside the room that could contribute to my practice being more sacred included the behavior of other people. I noticed when other people are more focused and more attentive to the practice; it creates a domino effect and makes everyone else feel the same. This feeling creates a sense of peace and harmony inside of the room. Music defiantly plays a major role on creating that feeling of sacredness. When I did yoga over the summer, I did it in my room with silence a majority of the time. Although this was peaceful , it almost felt as if something was missing from the experience. The music that was being played consisted of relaxing tribal like beats. As I would focus on my breathing while executing the postures, I would notice how I would always find myself listening and focusing on the music again. I found that it helped me concentrate more and feel more at peace. This yoga class takes place inside of a multipurpose room at Stockton. Therefore, there is nothing really sacred about it. After reading Chapter 4 in 21^st Century Yoga Culture, Politics, and Practice, the statement about how yoga is generally practiced outdoors struck out to me. Personally, I feel as if my practice would become more meaningful and sacred if it was practiced outside in nature. Unfortunately, it is way too cold to do that during this time of year, but yoga outside would definitely make a difference of feeling.