My Relationship with Yoga (and the Gym)

When I was in middle school and early high school I had a regular yoga practice at a studio in Miami.  I started going to Basic level classes and gradually worked my way up to Intermediate/Advanced, meeting a few really inspiring yoga teachers along the way.  I felt like I was getting serious about yoga and even toyed with the idea of working for my teaching certification.  My grandparents bought me a really nice yoga mat as a Chanukah gift one year and I still have it.  As high school pressed on, I got busier and 90 minute yoga classes plus travel time each way just did not fit into my packed schedule (read: four year plan to go Ivy if it killed me).  I stopped going to yoga but I kept in touch with the receptionist, who I had become friends with, and a couple of the teachers.  One of them, notable for his use of reverberating sound bowls during his classes, went on to start a yoga and wellness movement on South Beach and I still receive his email updates.  Another teacher was my absolute favorite because I loved that at the ends of her classes she would give each student a mini forehead massage with chakra oil during savasana.  I still have a little bottle of that oil and it still has a certain comfort to it.  She moved to Puerto Rico where she is happily married with an adorable son and we keep in touch on Facebook. 

            When I started college I sought out a yoga studio to try here in Boston.  I knew I did not like gym yoga because it felt too exercise-y and not spiritual enough.  I liked starting class chanting Om’s and feeling that my practice had a meaning to it beyond exercise.  I went to one class at the studio I found but I quickly became wrapped up in classes and extracurriculars and adjusting to the fact that the weather outside was very, very different from what I was used to in sunny South Florida.  I went to the gym sometimes but it wasn’t really a big part of my life.  I had brought the nice yoga mat with me and it sat in the corner of my tiny dorm room the entire year except for the one excursion to a class.  Yoga was one of those things I always really earnestly meant to do, but it somehow always fell by the wayside.

            Part way through this past summer at home in Miami, I started working out a lot and lifting weights.  It was mostly as a healthy outlet to combat stress.  In the fall I came back to Boston for classes and at that point I was going to the gym nearly every day.  I was benching and I could lift more than my body weight with my quads.  I was really, really excited about that.  I also did not quite understand two things that tie together: slowly lifting heavy weights does not actually burn that many calories, and it will make you bulk up even if you’re eating healthy.  Which I was not exactly doing, because in my mind I was going to the gym every day and that easily justified eating whatever I pleased.  Certain articles of clothing stopped fitting me and I started bringing cardio days back into the mix but it didn’t quite work.

            At home in Miami again for a few weeks for Winter Break, I worked with a trainer who taught me some important fundamentals.  The biggest thing was that our bodies do not know that we live in modern times, and will interpret anything we do physically in evolutionary terms.  If you lift heavy weights slowly, your body will think you need to move boulders on a daily basis in order to survive and it will store extra body fat to make sure you will have the bulk and strength to do that.  If, on the other hand, you exhaust your muscles by lifting lighter weights more quickly and with more repetition, your body will think you need to run away from predators to survive and it will get more lean.  The food component is based on the same primal responses: if you eat every three hours you are telling your body that there is an abundance of food and it does not need to store any extra body fat, but wait four hours between meals and your body will think you are having trouble finding food and will store fat to make sure you don’t die.  It’s quite considerate of it, really, but if you don’t understand these mechanisms it can be very easy to accidentally put on weight.  When you’re only five foot two like me, extra weight is very noticeable.  And it’s not about being skinny, it’s about being healthy (looking and feeling).

            My trainer started me on a circuit training regimen with weights and sent me back to Boston for the spring semester with exercise routines in hand.  I alternate strength training circuit days with cardio days, as the cardio is just as important for your heart and for fat burning.  It’s been a few months of this now and it’s been going really, really well.  I feel healthy and strong.  A few weeks ago while doing a drop set on the shoulder press machine, I felt something hurt in the back of my right shoulder.  It seemed to be one of those tiny muscles really deep in there that I couldn’t reach to stretch.  I wouldn’t call it an injury but it was certainly a strain, and moving my arm the wrong way was painful.  A (knowledgeable) friend took a look at it for me and recommended that I go easy on my shoulder for a while and avoid moving my arm above my horizontal shoulder line.

           I adapted my workouts to make sure I wasn’t neglecting my upper body but was still taking care of my shoulder so as not to turn a twinge into a full on injury.  It was then, as I added in a lot more stretching post-workouts, that yoga popped into my mind.  It’s funny but a lot of people turn to yoga as a result of an injury and I gravitated to it as well.  I went back to the studio I had tried freshman year; it had changed locations to a beautiful, new space and I went on a Sunday night to try it.  I brought the yoga mat with me; it had been sitting in the corner of my dorm room yet again.  The studio had that familiar yoga studio feel and smell to it.  It felt like home.  Most yoga studios do, I have found.  The teacher and the class were great and I really stretched into my shoulder.

            The next week I felt like I was ready to get back on my shoulder and I slowly eased back into my exercises.  Thankfully all went well and my shoulder seems to be fine.  I still pay a little extra attention to it.  As for yoga, I have continued to practice.  A friend introduced me to a different studio here that offers $5 community classes on weekday afternoons.  At that price (as opposed to the usual $15 a pop) going once a week is no problem.  The Thursday afternoon class is taught by one of the best teachers in Boston and I have gone twice so far.  This studio too feels like home and I feel at home on my mat.  I’ve come full circle and feel much more balanced now that I have reincorporated yoga in my fitness routine.  I’ve added some yoga into my post-workout stretches and I’ll even flow through a vinyasa or two in the morning or at night before I go to sleep.  I’m learning to use the physiological effects of specific poses to my advantage and also deepen into my muscles.  Yoga is also a much different experience now that I have muscle strength from working out, as opposed to six years ago when yoga was the only athletic activity I did at all.  I’m glad that I have found a place for it in my life again.

Finding Strength in Child's Pose

I was in quite possibly the most intense yoga class I have ever taken.  It was an arm balancing class and I don’t have much experience with those types of poses in the first place.  At one point in the class, the teacher gave us the option to stay in downward dog or take child’s pose.  When she noticed that most of the class had stayed in downward facing dog she said, “And for those of you not taking child’s pose right now because you want to look or feel strong, remember that child’s pose is a strong pose.” 

This can be explored in two different directions- not taking child’s pose in order to look strong, and not taking child’s pose in order to feel strong.  They aren’t two mutually exclusive directions, as the line between the two is admittedly blurry.  The part about trying to look strong resonated a little.  When I’m in a yoga class I tell myself I’m practicing for no one but myself but I inevitably slip into trying to take the hardest variations; it’s mostly to challenge myself and feel strong but sometimes it’s a little bit motivated by trying not to look like the weak one in the class.  We all know that feeling.  However, the direction of trying to feel strong really hit the nail on the head for me.  I was still in downward dog because taking child’s pose felt like I would be giving up, unable to hold my pose any longer, and sinking to the floor.  When she pointed out that child’s pose is a strong pose, I started to see it that way for the first time.  I started to bring strength into my practice of child’s pose, feeling the stretch in my back and the strength in my arms.  Since I returned to practicing yoga (more on that soon) I also have incorporated it into my stretching after my daily workouts at the gym. 

Coming out of an invigoratingly strong child’s pose at the gym a couple days later I began to think about how to apply lessons learned on the mat to life off the mat, a principle that a past yoga teacher in Miami had always emphasized.  I realized that you have to find your own source of strength from somewhere inside you, your source of strength to restore your own balance.  Because you can’t be breaking down all the time.  I can’t be breaking down all the time.  I have things to do, goals to accomplish, and work to do to get me there in every aspect of my life.  So when I start to spiral into a bad mood that is going to ruin the rest of my day, it is my responsibility to catch myself and stop it.  It is no one else’s job to do that.  It is mine and mine alone to be attentive to and aware of my physical and mental state.  If I start to spiral, I need to identify the root cause immediately and address it.  If I can’t identify it, then I must proceed straight to catching myself before I spiral to the point of no return.  I need to find my internal strength and restore my own balance. 

For me, my internal mental strength comes from physiological strength.  If I take a minute in child’s pose, or hero’s pose, or just do a couple of vinyasas and completely focus on the pose or the flow, I can restore my balance all by myself.  Not in a place that I can drop to the floor and do yoga?  No problem.  That’s why yoga is valuable on and off the mat- if I mimic the focus, calmness, and feeling of strength that I find in the poses just in my mind, I can use that to restore my balance and find my stability.  I used to dislike stability because I found it boring.  But I’ve learned that stability is a good thing, a state to relish.  It reminds you that at the end of the day you are in control of yourself and that feels good.  There will be moments of the day that you are purely, uninhibitedly enjoying what you’re doing.  Strive to have as many of those moments as possible.  There will be moments that you don’t enjoy quite as much.  But try not to let yourself stray too far from the middle because that will throw you off balance.