When you come to class it can be handy to try to use your yoga practice as a balance to the rest of your life. If your life that week has been one of you constantly running around like a pork chop, feeling stressed and frazzled without one moment of downtime you might want to come along and do the moves slowly with lots of deep breaths and pauses between postures. Pause as often as possible, letting your body assimilate the moves and giving yourself some space, creating a bit of a balance in your hectic life. If your week has been one of lots of sitting, not much doing, a bit of boredom and lots of zombieing(?) out in front of the TV you might choose a more challenging practice, holding your Downward Dogs for longer, going a little bit further into a difficult posture (still safely in your body’s capacity of course!), doing the moving routines at a fair pace, even if your mind is fighting you. So, fast and strong is not bad and slow and gentle is not bad but look out for what you need to create a more balanced life and use your yoga practice for that. Most of us do it the other way around, if we have a wildly busy life we then come to yoga and push push push and keep that pace going through class because that is the pace at which we feel comfortable. Of course the opposite applies, if we find it hard to get motivated and constantly look for the easy way we also do the same thing in our class, looking for the softest and least active way to do the posture, because that is our comfort zone. Try doing something different to your normal patterning and see how it feels!
Props – Part 3
Wow, I did not realise I had so much to say about props!! Take the time to think about what you need, notice in class
