Thursday, February 19, 2009

Yoga

When it comes to flexibility, mine is non-existent. It's pretty bad. I can't even touch my toes. And over the past few months, as I run more, my flexibility just becomes worse. So, I decided to do something about it. I started doing yoga.

Yoga and I have an interesting relationship. As a teen my mom practiced yoga pretty regularly. She had the book "Autobiography of a Yogi" in our bookshelf at home and I always thought the he or she? on the cover looked pretty weird. Check it out and tell me what you think:



Basically, I thought of yoga as some weird sort of practice. And then my mom finally took me to a class. It was a class focusing on a type of yoga called kundalini, which focuses on the breath. They had us start by doing this exercise called "breath of fire" where basically you breath outward through your nose really fast for 30 seconds. It makes a weird sound, and it cracked my friend Maryam and I up. We never looked at yoga the same way!

Now I'm doing yoga about 1-2x a week at a studio here in LA. With all the fast paced, crazy days I have at work, nothing feels better than walking into that yoga studio after a long day and being greeted by the aroma of incense and lit candles inside the studio. It instantly calms me. I feel so much more relaxed after doing yoga. And it challenges me both mentally and physically. I like that.

I'm really glad my co-workers convinced me to come out and do yoga with them. It's definitely making a difference in my moods. And guess what? I can touch my toes now :)