Act 3: Just Breathe... and Sweat.

Anyone who has ever worked out with me knows that I don't ease into things (most of the time).  I like high intensity.  High impact.  I want to push myself.  The energy high afterward that makes you feel like you could take on the world.  That wonderful tightness the next day that makes you feel accomplished and makes you want to do it again.  I want to feel like I worked out.

This is the main reason I've never done yoga.  No impact.  Little movement.  Very quiet.  Make no mistake, I never thought it would be easy.  I thought it would be boring!  But I decided it was time.  Partially because I have the time and partially because I have friends who never fail to be surprised by how tense my shoulders are.  I don't feel tense.  Apparently it's my natural state.  Admittedly though, I get stressed easily.  Maybe yoga would de-stress me some?

So on Monday night I went to a yoga class at my Y.  I don't know much about different styles of yoga but this one was called Vinyasa Flow.  The instructor said that just means that one move flows smoothly into the next.  I kind of thought that all forms of yoga included smoothly flowing movements, but maybe there's a kind out there with jarring, jerky movements.  Who knows!

I don't remember all the moves we did, but for the first half hour there were a couple of solid progressions we went through multiple times.  They included things like mountain pose, low lunge, scorpion, warrior, down dog, up dog (fetch!  good boy :-P), and others whose names will remain anonymous because I can't remember them.  Most weren't too bad, but a couple had my muscles shaking like crazy. 

By the end of that first half hour I was wiped out.  At one point the instructor told us that if we needed to take a break we could just go into child's pose and all I could think was 'I'd love to but you haven't told me what that is!'  The second half hour was easier.  More long holds and deep stretches that were nice but also made me feel extremely inflexible.  The last 5 minutes was relaxation and I basically fell asleep.  Seemed pretty relaxed to me! 

When I left the class I felt like I was walking out of a massage.  I felt light and decidedly not tense, but that feeling only lasted in the range of 5-8 minutes.  A bit later I could feel a tightness in some muscles that I stretched farther than they would usually chose to go.  It's still not high impact and it didn't quite make me feel accomplished the way lifting or running does, but I do feel like I worked out.


"I do yoga so that I can stay flexible enough to kick my own arse if necessary." ~Betsy Cañas Garmon