yoga class 2018

After trying some new classes here at lifetime like surrender and now doing as well at them as I’d like to I decided to take another roots class. Roots is a beginner level yoga class which teaches all the new yogis basic poses and breathing. It’s just what I needed. The instruction is more personal because the teacher comes over and helps position you to assure you’re doing it right. They also take you through basic breathing exercises that will help calm you and make you work more efficiently. This class really helped me work on my basic poses and it felt like more of a practice than a class. It was very informal; the instructor wasn’t really taking us through any sort of routine so much as she was just showing us poses. I liked it. I think it was something I really needed at the time because I didn’t feel ready yet for some of the last few classes I attended.

This week I did a Vinyasa flow class. It’s probably the most popular class at my gym back home. It’s most similar to Ashtanga because it is very sequenced, and focused on breathing. We started out with sun salutations they called their Vinyasa. It was a sequence of planks, chaturanga, and upward facing dog.   The instructor kind of set the pace, but then let us preform it on our own. After the salutations we moved into more complex sequences that the instructor took us through. She kept reiterating breathing and being efficient. The whole class seemed like a commercialized ashtanga, but I think I liked it just as much as our in class practices. It was challenging but laid back at the same time. The tempo was easy to keep up with, and the poses had beginner poses if you couldn’t do the real one.

This week I tried a class at lifetime fitness called Surrender and it kicked my butt. I took it because I was told it would really get deep into my hips, and lower back to open them up from years of not stretching. The class left me about as sore as Bikram did. My hips and back are sore but I do feel like this class would help them if I kept going. I think the pain is from working on all the tension built up within those muscle groups. The class itself consisted of more repetition of the same poses that some other classes and we held the stretch much longer and deeper than I usually do. I feel like the two classes I’ve done at lifetime are much more commercialized. They do still use Sanskrit but only on occasion. Usually it’s Americanized (i.e. calling movements downward dog and stuff). I don’t really mind them not using Sanskrit but a true yogi might.

I tried another wake up class this week. I went in with no coffee or caffeine of any sort in order to see if it would truly wake me up. We started with some breathing and meditation to “wake up our mind”. We were supposed to visualize our day. What we were going to do, what we have to get done, stuff like that. We then moved into our sun salutations, which was a great way to work out all the stiffness and achiness from our nights sleep. I for one always wake up with a stiff back cause I sleep on my stomach and this was an excellent way to quickly loosen that up. After the sun salutations we moved on to other poses that apparently help your body get ready for the day. This class really does energize you and prepare you for the day, but I don’t think I can do without my coffee. If I incorporate both I might have the best wake up routine ever! I’m not really sure why type of yoga this was or what it was based after because it doesn’t seem to have a particular style like