photo credit: Teecycle Tim
I have come lately to yoga.
I have always liked the idea of it – stretching, balancing, energy flows etc. But somehow in my busy lifestyle I have never quite had the time to do it.
I did try Wii-Fit Yoga once. I discovered that while I am unable to balance on one leg (either on or off the Wii-Fit board), I am the undisputed champion of sitting still. In a house full of children, no-one can plonk on their bottom and remain immobile like I can. Are we surprised?
Me sitting still does not look like this. photo credit: Grand Velas Riviera Maya
Anyway, a dear friend who is also a yoga instructor invited me to one of her beginner classes, and I happened to be free at the day and time, so I went along. I was thrilled to find a group of women who were of similar age to me, and older. Good start. I still have flashbacks to high-cut shiny lycra in the gyms of the late 1980s. And leg-warmers and sweat-bands. OMG – that was Olivia!
I was also thrilled to find that despite being more yoga-experience than me, no-one else was an expert or a bendy-flexible nymph. Accommodations were made for bad knees, bad shoulders, bad backs. And it has to be said, weak muscles (particularly upper-body strength – I am talking about me again here) and poor balance.
I quite enjoyed it. The fascinating thing I found was that some of the stretches were the same stretches my exercise physiologist had prescribed for me, and also very similar to Pilates stretches I remembered from a sadistic Pilates instructor from five years ago (still recovering from the experience!)
And I was good enough to go back two days later to the “slightly more advanced beginner class”.
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