Getting Bendy

I'll be completely honest, before now I'd never been a big yoga fan...There I said it! But oh my how my opinions have changed! I've gone from avoiding it to looking forward to the weekly sessions I attend. 

Before now, I'd had a couple of goes at yoga and found it not the slightest bit relaxing; for one I couldn't shut the chatter in my brain off, I also struggled to get my head around these strange positions that I was being told to put my body in... It also wasn't helped by my social anxiety being heightened due to the association between yoga positions and the accidental letting out of our bodies natural gasses...! On top of that, the only other time I'd tried a yoga class was admittedly with my dad, who fell asleep and snored very loudly during the final relaxation causing a then 19 year old me extreme embarrassment and stifled giggling... Needless to say it was not a class we returned to! 

So how did I go from actively avoiding yoga to looking forward to it and squeezing in a home practice between my weekly sessions? Well firstly, and I think this is the most important factor in my conversion, the Yogi is incredible. I go to a pre and postnatal class at my local gym, and it is perfect. Most of the time it is just me, so I get a perfectly tailored session for what I need (calming my nervous system, shutting my brain off and avoiding any moves requiring lying on my front), though to be fair, even when it's not just me the sessions are still pretty well the same. Secondly, I've seen a direct improvement from going to these sessions, once I started going (and I admit I started some other treatments at the same time, so it's probably the combination, but I'll touch more on those in later posts) my improvement journey finally started. The yoga sessions have helped me to stretch out the weekly tension that builds up in my body, it helps me to have an hour of real down time where my brain actually shuts off! Something I thought was impossible. I think this is mostly because of the tempo of movement that we do, it's slow hatha yoga but we dont remain in position for too long, and when we do it is all around breathwork and feeling the breath in the body, which takes my brain to focus on that instead of flicking from one thought to the next. Finally, it feels good. There's no way to describe the improvement in how my body feels after a session, the reduction in tension and soreness, but also the feeling of calm that washes over me. The only thing I can compare it to is the feeling after a really good massage or nap when your sort of in that happy cozy warm haze before you fully wake. 

I'd love to be able to go Into detail as to why yoga works for helping treat my current condition, but I don't know enough about it, so here's what I do know. Working with your breath, slowing down your movement and movements such as forward folds all help to calm the nervous system, which is ultimately exactly what the doctor ordered (literally). 

So there you go, I'm a complete yoga convert! 

Ta ta for now! 

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