Fear, anxiety, and joy

Since January, I've been teaching a yoga class on Wednesday evening for the employees of the Veteran's Hospital. I love this group! When I started teaching them, only a few had ever taken a yoga class. Most weren't even sure what yoga was - just that it was supposed to be gentle and good for you. I've got a regular group that has embraced both the practice and my ability to teach it. Today I was a few minutes late to class due to parking problems at the hospital and when I entered the room, my class was all sitting in sukhasana - cross-legged pose - and meditating. This is how I start all my classes, but this is the first time I've ever walked in and experienced it. Usually they are all sitting on their mats chatting and it takes me a few minutes to get them to settle. I was so proud!

The past couple of classes I've been having them do more of what I refer to as "power poses". I call them by that name because they require power to do them AND they make you feel powerful when you do them. These are poses that require strength - muscular, breathing, and mental. I explained to them today that we are focusing on these poses because it is time for us to start learning inversions - headstand and shoulderstand, maybe handstand. They all got different looks on their faces - fear, anxiety, concern - so I took a moment to explain how we will go about preparing to invert, and why we would would even want to in the first place. Aside from the physiological benefits, inversions are a huge mental strengthener. Think about it - when was the last time you stood on your head or your hands or put your feet above your head? Really, it's about going outside your comfort zone, and not just surviving it but embracing it. It's the ability to suck it up, although this is not a phrase I use in yoga. That is the true benefit of the practice - the ability to put your body into poses that might feel strange or uncomfortable, and then finding a way to live with it. As long as you can breathe, you can live with it. The physical benefits come from our ability to conquer our discomfort. The longer we can hold a pose, the more release we will get, and the deeper we will be able to go.

I wonder from time to time if my quick learning of yoga was aided by my endurance training or if it's the other way around - or if the mental toughness, the ability to suck it up, is something that I've always had, and I'm drawn to both triathlon and yoga for that reason. It's hard to say, but I do know that the mental focus I get from yoga definitely helps me survive the tough training days, and allows me to truly enjoy the good days. Mentally, there is very little difference between a perfect headstand and an awesome run. FYI - you can get a runner's high in yoga class.

On a side note, I've been working on increasing my upperbody strength, which is a sad shade of its former self. Today we were working on sideplank. My students were doing the modified version, and doing it well, I might add. It's all about baby steps. One of my students asked what the final pose looked like. Sometimes I won't demonstrate the peak pose because it's so different from what we are doing or just so intimidating that there is no value in seeing it. In this case, we have already done all the pieces of the final pose so I was okay doing it. I was thrilled because I was actually able to demonstrate it as shown in the picture below. I couldn't quite get my top leg straight - the hamstrings are tight from biking, and my arm couldn't hold me for long, but I'm pretty pleased. Hopefully the soft, squishy loaves of bread that are my upper arms will soon be a thing of the past.