So, I recently started doing Yoga. It's been just 3 months, and I don't go regularly (work travel!), but I feel like a new me. I can barely touch my toes and my hamstrings feel like the thick dentist rubber-bands that barely stretch and you have to pull so hard they sometimes snap in your mouth.
Since I've re-lived that ugly moment in excruciating detail, lets move on - to why
yoga... it just feels right. I actually feel mellow and happy after the class. My muscles don't feel like they've contracted, and I leave class smiling. Okay, okay, I sound like an evangelist, but I'm really considering it! Well, you might argue that what I do isn't really 'yoga', and is really the exercise part of the comprehensive discipline that is yoga, but, hell, who cares. If the acrobatics alone work so awesomely, I'll do the whole thing. (In fact, I've taken the first steps in the directio
n by buying BKS Iyengar's Light on Life. Note this Big Feet.)
Anyway, maybe this yoga thing is just so shiny and happy and awesome because of my gym experience. No no, not just because of the baby face and the other guy, but because it plain sucked. Yes, I liked that I had to prove myself to no one, my time was my own and all that, but I also felt like a scrunched up ball of paper. Maybe that's what the gym does - you don't really lose weight, but everything just contracts and you feel tight and compressed, like this...
The other problem I have with the gym is the need to make conversations and be social. Now, apart from the bizarre conversations with baby face and his ilk, I also run into people I know, and am forced to talk about gym performance, how much I'm enjoying it and also, yes, it is apparently good practice, crib about how hard your trainer is pushing you. Now, that's the next issue. I had a trainer. I find it impossible to make him wait or skip class because he has this mute, judgmental look that makes me feel terrible. Come rain, shine, period or pain, I went to the gym, including a miserable 3-month period when I went from 6am to 7am. He didn't really push me too hard, but I didn't do it at my own pace, and that was terrible. In comparison, yoga seems wonderful. You're focusing on your breathing so much that you don't have to make conversation and the declared way to progress is 'finding your own path'.
Not really suitable for conversation. No?
I left gym after workouts convincing myself how awesome it was and how lovely it felt. I hated the repetition, the absolutely-zero mental challenge, and the sweaty smell mixed with air freshener. To tell you the truth, it sucked. Anyway it's over now. (Though I miss watching Rakhi ka Swayamwar on TV while on the treadmill.Now I watch random podcasts on my iPod)
I tried to sell of the remaining 2 months of my membership, but I must admit, it lasted 10 whole months. I may get pained with yoga sometime, but I try balance it with running, so the 'cool' side of me is happy too. Maybe I'll do Bikram yoga (really, if you do yoga in any Indian city at 11am, it's Bikram yoga no? Chennai beaches are perfect - humidity and heat). Also, maybe the yoga delight is because K joins me these days.
P.S.: I'm running the Hyderabad 10k next week. Hope you'll cheer for me!
PPS: I'll write a more 'analytical' blog on why yoga vs. gym., but had to get this out!
PPPS: I may gym again though, who knows.
2 comments:
Salutes to the conquerer of the 10K and Iyengar Yoga. Did I tell you that I had a brief flirtation with yoga as well? Not our fake power yoga (though I try to re-create it once in a bluemoon when there's nothing fun on Star World), but the proper class with personal instructor and all that jazz. It sadly ended because I preferred to sleep rather than touch my toes.
Our poweryoga was not fake. Hrmph.
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