For my extra credit assignment I decided to attend a Yoga class at the Cary Street Gym. I have not had any previous experience with meditation and I have a lot of friends who take yoga classes, or rather Westernized yoga classes. I was expecting a lot of stretching and breathing, pushing my body to fold in ways it normally doesn’t to release tension. That was pretty much what I got. The class started off right away into the exercises. I wasn’t expecting any sort of lecture about what we were going to do or the goal of this 60 minute class but I wish something was done just because a lot of people don’t realize that this is not real yoga. Yoga is not just about stretching but about knowing about the flow of the pranas and the 5 restraints. One cant really be doing a task if they don’t know what it entails.
Even though I felt there was no background into this class, I liked it overall. I definitely felt a lot better when I left. Through the breathing and stretching exercises I felt very calm and I did feel like I was taking myself away from all the complications that one encounters in life, things that attaches us to this world. The instructor was also very nice and helpful because like I said before I had never done anything like this. My form of exercise is more of running or playing a rough game of basketball so I’m used to more activity so it was quite a change to be sitting still for long periods of time and to hear it called “exercise”. Overall I had a good experience from this class and its something I wouldn’t mind doing again.
The only question this raises for me is if the professional studios bother to give a lecture about what Yoga is in their classes. The one at Cary St. is one that you can just drop into at any time so they don’t really push the literature. But in the studios that have classes that can only be taken with enrollment, do they go over what Yoga really is and its origin?
