More Yoga

Why is yoga so popular all over the world? For me personally it is a method to stay healthy and happy. During my yoga praxis I come back into the present moment and gain great relaxation immediately after I finished. It lowers my heartrate significantly and improves my sleep when going to bed afterwards. Different poses and flows allow me to become more flexible and become stronger. I practice yoga now for several years, with the focus on physical movements, the Asanas. On my way I tried several ways of doing yoga, which I want to share with you in this blog.

Yoga Studio

My first touch point with Yoga was with my previous employer. The office was located a level above a yoga studio and the company paid for one class a week at the studio. The studio offered different classes but for me timewise the Basic Yoga class Monday evening was the only fit in my busy schedule. As it was for free, I gave it a try. The rooms were minimal with some green plans and a candle to make it cozier. All equipment was provided like thin yoga mat, blankets and bricks. This was very convenient as I did not have to buy anything new and just arrive in comfortable sports clothes. The class was a hop on, hop off class, so every time there were different people with different experience joining the class.

I had no theoretical background and was therefore a little bit surprised that breathing was a thing. Besides swimming, I never experienced a sport, where I was asked to look after my breathing. It helped a lot at the beginning to get detailed instructions and that the teacher corrected my poses. After two years of weekly practice, I felt that I reached the end of my development. I learned or experienced nothing new, as the teacher did not extend the practice giving the fact that every time new people joined. The relaxation benefit didn’t last long for me, as I still had to commute home and spending time in traffic usually stresses me. Therefore, after my company moved offices and the offering was not anymore available in the new location, I stopped my yoga practice.

YouTube

I’m a passionate runner. It helps me to avoid back pain from my office job and supports me in thinking. Unfortunately, it also makes me stiff, and I have the feeling the standard stretching you learn in school does not help a lot. So, I was very glad when a friend of mine recommended me a 20 minutes yoga for runners video at YouTube which really helped to get the stiffness out after a long run. It reminded me also how great Shavasana was, and I decided to incorporate yoga again into my life. However, I did not want to commute to a studio again, so I gave Mady Morrison on YouTube a go. I like her videos, as they are calm and relaxing, to the point and easy to follow. The flexibility of on-demand videos allowed me to incorporate the practice in my day wherever it fitted in. It is just great to go directly to bed after Shavasana so the sleep quality improved a lot. However, again the yoga poses, and flows are limited to the videos uploaded and I missed the nice yoga mat provided by the studio as I only used an old school thick gymnastic mat.

Yoga App

After watching a show on Netflix in which a Yogi won against mainly strong weightlifters in a physical competition, my partner also wanted to try yoga for himself. After researching different apps, he decided to go with DownDog. The app has several settings for experience level, language, music, boosters for different parts of the body and a flexible timer. Of course, I joined him for his now daily routine. I was amazed by the flexibility and variety the app provides and can only recommend it for everyone who would like to practice yoga at home. As I had only one mat, we had to get a second one now. A friend recommended us to get the mat from SECOROCO as it is plastic free and comes in paper packaging. The mat is really great, so I decided to keep my old gymnastic mat now in the corner and also bought a cork mat for myself.

The benefits of doing yoga with others are the motivational aspect as well as somebody is able to correct your pose when learning new ones. There are several advantages for a studio as well as doing yoga wherever you are with a supporting app. As life is constantly in a flow, you may also change your yoga practice over the time to adapt it to your situation. However, if you never tried yoga out so far, I would like to encourage you to give it a try. If you want to keep it simply and free of costs at the beginning, just jump into some comfortable sports clothes, download the trial version of a yoga app or go on YouTube and give it a go. You will see, you will feel much better afterwards.