Refresh Yourself

By Suyeon Choi, New York

It was about a year ago when I started to think that I had to do something about my body. I just didn’t feel right at all. Easily exhausted, never felt refreshed, sharp aches in lower back and hip area, continuously gained weight, and so on. Once a marathoner, I had been always in love with running. However, back then in the middle of a notorious New York winter, I had to find something I could do inside. And to be honest, I felt like trying what trendy and stylish New Yorkers did. My conclusion? I ended up signing up for yoga at a nearby yoga studio.

I have to admit that the original purpose of my starting yoga was impure. I did not care one bit about meditation or peace of mind. Instead, it was all about being trendy while maintaining a fit body. When I first went to the studio with my newly bought yoga-wear, I was very surprised and embarrassed to find out that there were many different types of yoga. A person at the front desk asked me which class I wanted to take, and then after looking at the schedule, I picked “Ashtanga” only because it was on the right time for me and it was open to all levels. This is how I first encountered Ashtanga Yoga.

The first month with yoga gave me only a great deal of discouragement. I felt like I was the worst student among the whole class. Everyone besides me looked like a yogi master. They could completely bend their bodies in half both forwards and backwards, stand upside-down without any support except their hands or heads and stay there almost forever without losing balance, twist their bodies in amazing ways, and lift themselves up into the air with only one hand. Those poses just seemed impossible. However, at the same time, it also seemed like a whole new world and gave me motivation to try harder. Probably many people who are not familiar with yoga think that we only need to be flexible to be good at yoga. Wrong. The truth is that yoga requires high level of sustainable muscle power more than flexibility. Moreover, you sweat a lot, even if it is not Bikram Yoga (which is a type of yoga you practice within a heated room). Consequently, after several months of dedicated practice accompanied with appropriate diet, you get a beautiful body with well shaped muscles as well as a refreshed peaceful mind.

Three months later, I found myself so much into yoga, much more than I expected. I was happy to be in the class, and excited to see my day-by-day improvement. Every posture (called “asana”), which was very challenging and seemed impossible to me in the beginning, gradually became united together with my own body. Soon, I found myself very comfortable and even relaxed – and highly conscious of the reaction of every muscle in my body at the same moment – while practicing those postures. What was it about yoga that made me get so much into it? Once you experience the satisfaction and the peacefulness yoga offers, it becomes obvious why so many people in the world happily bend, twist, and stretch their bodies, which, to the rest of the people, may seem to be a form of torture.

It is hard to name all the benefits of yoga. From my personal experience, the largest difference between yoga and other forms of exercise is that yoga always comes with a deep level of mental relaxation and a high level of concentration on or awareness of my own body. Many people say yoga gives many psychological and spiritual benefits. When I first encountered yoga due to my own health issues and other funny reasons, those aspects of yoga were of not my concern. However, one day, after two hours of intense yoga, when I lay down on the floor in the corpse posture (Savasana), I felt like crying. I believe that it was the first moment I realized why yoga is also considered a form of mental therapy. I found myself in a totally stress-free state and all my frustrations gone. It was a cathartic experience, similar to what I would feel after crying. Now, I am a die-hard fan of yoga’s mental benefits as well as its physical ones.

In order to get a taste of mind-relief from yoga, you don’t have to be hard-core about it. Just a few sessions of gentle practice would be enough for you to get attracted to yoga. If you are intimidated by bizarre postures, why don’t you simply start with breathing in a yoga way - abdominal respiration? Fifteen minutes of right breathing and meditation by yourself will give you noticeable difference for your depressed mood and tiredness from daily hectic pace of life. And then, if you feel like you might want to know more about yoga, you can always find many opportunities offered free by your neighborhood yoga studios. Namaste.