Last week, I came across the offer of an introductory month of streaming Gaia yoga classes (and, it turns out, many other resources) for just $.99 (see? Facebook ads DO work!)
I’ve been mulling over a return to yoga for months, but I haven’t yet managed to drag myself to a class. I have busted out the yoga mat that Santa dutifully brought me for Christmas a number of times and for various reasons but I haven’t been able to get motivated to work on getting into a real yoga groove again.
I love yoga. For me it is an extremely enjoyable experience and a deeply spiritual practice. In these days of Bikram and gym yoga, it’s been a challenge for me to find studios and instructors who combine the mind-body experience in the way that I want and that I’m willing to pay for.
When I started to seriously consider checking out all that Gaia has to offer, I enlisted the company of a great friend. Amy. Being the details master and super organizer that she is, she sniffed out the 14-day Fundamentals of Yoga series and that seemed like a great place to start.
Amy and I come from different yoga backgrounds. If I’d known she found yoga intimidating, I would have dragged her out to a class YEARS ago. But because we live in different cities, 295 miles apart, it isn’t like we can just catch a studio class together so this was a great way for us to share the experience. We picked a date to start and decided to debrief after each session.
Here are a few of the questions we asked one another before we got started. These are Amy’s answers. You can find mine here.
- What’s your yoga background? I’ve never done traditional yoga, outside of a few poses, for which I don’t remember why I would have even done them. I have taken 3 Bikram classes and I imagine it’s very much what hell is like.
- What has prevented you from trying it in the past? Laziness I guess. And partially fear. Yoga is a topic that feels tremendously overwhelming, and I really never knew where to start. Couple that with my laziness, and it’s a recipe for not attempting it at all.
- What are your expectations for trying yoga? That it will be relaxing, but I know it will also be difficult after having little physical activity in nearly a year and a half.
- What do you hope to gain from this 14-day fundamentals series? Flexibility. Create a base for future series and more advanced work. Calm. Routine. Both of which I’m lacking.
- What is the single most important thing that yoga can bring to you? A level of fitness I’ve never experienced before.
Do you practice yoga? Do you prefer doing it at home or in a studio?
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[…] how my favourite partner in crime and I were closing the gap over the 295 miles between us and exploring yoga together. Well, sort of. We’d decided to sign up for Gaia and do the same 14-day yoga fundamentals […]