Relax and Enjoy Your Yoga
Many people from the Indian sub-continent have commented on the way yoga is taught in Western countries as being competitive and exercise-driven, losing the essence of what yoga is about – that is the union of body and soul.
Certainly I’ve been to many yoga classes where I’ve felt excluded because the other yogis and yoginis can contort their bodies in difficult positions. For me, this is largely intimidating. I’m relatively fit (I’m working on getting fitter) but flexibility has never been one of my strong points. When I attend yoga classes in London, the emphasis has been on competition and pushing yourself to the extreme and for more than a decade I battled with this. Quietly I’d mutter to myself, whilst trying to breathe in the shoulder stand, where’s the soul in this?
Now it seems the way yoga is being taught in the West is maturing. At least in one San Francisco yoga studio, the brand of yoga being taught is getting back to basics. It might be perceived as nap time for adults for those die-hard exercise-driven yogis but this is restorative yoga; yoga that’s focused on inward reflection and as the instructor Elsie Collins says “it’s more like getting a massage.” (Source: see San Francisco Chronicle for more on restorative yoga)
So for those of us who are used to being hard on our bodies, putting it through yoga contortion,there’s hope for us yet. We can balance power yoga like Ashtanga with gentle restorative yoga.
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