How a Month of Yoga for Beginners Really Threw Me Off Balance
After just over three weeks of hard daily yoga practice for the Lifehacker Fitness Challenge , I cannot say that I have become a yoga devotee. But I will say that it was less painful than I originally expected. As I mentioned in the previous post , I learned to appreciate the way practice makes me present at least once a day, and I found that leisurely stretching on the mat is so enjoyable that in the middle of any yoga session I look forward to relaxing in a pose corpse.
I also noticed that I feel soreness in my arms and legs for a week, indicating that I am gaining strength. A huge plus! It also tells me that I use muscles that I don’t usually use in my regular workouts, so whether or not I do yoga after this fitness task, I make a mental note to stir it up from time to time.
But one area I’m struggling in is breathing. And breathing work is extremely important in yoga , supposedly helping in everything from creating a deeper connection in the body to preventing injury. But for me, focusing on breathing makes me feel like I’m sneaking into hyperventilation. (Read: Not relaxing at all.) And it’s like the instructor is constantly saying, “Take a deep breath …” as we raise our hands to the sky or turn our shoulders away from our knees, and then wait for what seems like an eternity to hear her say “And a big exhale …” just starts to piss me off. I feel out of sync and like I’m doing it wrong.
I even tried the first two videos, the Breathing – 30 Day Yoga Journey series by Adrien Mishler (the mega-popular YouTube channel Yoga with Adrien ), and at some point it seemed to me that I might pass out from for a combination of a deep breath and a root that causes a jerk of the head, raises a wave of the hand.
All this makes me realize that yoga is really a special practice. There is a reason people need to be certified to become an instructor. You can’t just take this from a YouTube video. In an ideal world, I could attend a beginner class and ask the teacher for guidance when I thought I was breathing wrong. I will also be able to observe my classmates, monitor their shape and breathing. But in the event of a pandemic, it’s either a YouTube video or a Zoom course, and I just have to trust myself and not push anything that causes pain or potentially fainting.