All the Places I Call Home :): Thankful Saturday: YOGA!

Hey there wonderful blog readers :)

This Thankful post is appearing a bit later than expected, thank you for bearing with me!
This week I would love to talk about yoga and how thankful I am for it! The practice of yoga itself is not new to me. My mom has practiced yoga to different degrees since I can remember. I even remember having a yoga for kids book, with great illustrations.

Practicing yoga myself however is a pretty new development in my life. I took my first yoga class last September shortly after I had moved to Seattle. I went with my two roommates, and was overcome by the power of what I had just experienced. It was a very spiritual experience, with almost all of the practice being a mental prayer coupled with physical exercise. Since that powerful practice, yoga has been completely revolutionary for me. Not only do I feel great peace during the practice (though sometimes precipitated by anxiety of trying something new), but the exertion and exercise that I receive from yoga is unlike any other I have experienced. Suffering from migraines for most of my life, I am pretty aware of certain triggers. One of these triggers is exercise. For example, when I go to the gym, I usually run on the treadmill, do some weight lifting for my legs, do an ab work out and call it good and for whatever reason, this usually results in a mild migraine. With yoga, I feel the exertion in my muscles, I know that I am pushing myself, but the result is not a migraine. Yoga is this perfect balance between relaxation and exertion. Though my muscles are being pushed and my flexibility enhanced, the very nature of yoga reduces the number of migraines, rather than triggering them! I believe that the connection between mind and body in yoga helps my body reduce the stress I naturally carry. It is powerful and wonderful! My body feels so great after yoga.

Seattle has this really cool culture relating to free things--this includes people leaving furniture on the corner of their street for anyone to take to free yoga classes. I love the sense of community that this creates. It is because of this, that I have attended practices at three different yoga studios. Over the course of the last couple of months, I have seen myself improve in balance and flexibility. I have also noticed that when I am consistent about going to yoga classes my body feels better, I have less migraines and feel at peace with who I am. Yoga not only creates a powerful connection between body and soul, but it supports an atmosphere where growth and different levels of ability is respected and expected. Everyone is at a different point and you do what you can, challenging yourself to try more, but not causing your body pain. One of my teachers explained yoga like this, "a perfect balance between effort and ease." He said that if the practice was too easy we needed to push ourselves more, but we shouldn't never cross over to where the effort was painful.

On a typical day at a yoga studio I use four things:
1. A yoga mat. This provides padding on the floor while doing the practice.