I am so grateful that I’m in the Introductory class for my Yoga classes because holy smokes it’s not easy. Well maybe I should clarify this and say that it’s not easy for me. But for some crazy reason I sure like going to them. I mean it’s supposed to open up your back and hips while letting you breath in good oxygen. So far, I’ve been opening up a bottle of Advil more than I think I’m opening up any hip sockets. But I have faith that it will get easier and I’m planning on sticking to it!
I had to laugh tonight when the instructor was telling us one of the next poses that we had to do. She demonstrated it to us and the instructions were something like this: fold your mat in half with the folded edge towards the wall, fold two blankets in half and then half again and put the folded edge of the blankets on the outside edge of the folded mat, put a bolster on the bottom part of your mat and then fold over the one section of your mat so it meets up to your blanket. OK, seriously I felt that I should bring maybe a paper and pen to the class. I was trying to concentrate on what I was supposed to do and this was even before we did the pose.
OK, so after you had your space set up, put your butt just so you’re sitting on the bolster and your feet parallel to the mat but keep your bottom shins pushing together so your toes and ankles are touching. Now lean back to have your head over the blankets and 2 inches away from the edge of the mat.
Now hook a strap over your right hand and make a v shape with both hands just right under your pelvic bone.
So up to this point you were just getting ready. Now the work comes.
Kick your feet up over your head with keeping your back straight and your shoulders in, your hips pushing towards the mat, your knees pulling up, and then walk your shoulders down and in. With your legs over your head, you now take the strap and put it up on your arm and hook your other arm to it. You take your hands and with them shoulder width apart you clasp your hands. and reach back.
At this point you take one of your legs off the wall and it goes straight up (don’t bend any legs at this point) move your hands to your bank to make sure that it is also nice and straight.
Now you switch legs and then you pull both legs away from the wall with them straight up in the air while you are working on stretching your back backwards as far as you can. You know, opening up your back so it gets strong.
Yeah….
That’s what we were supposed to do.
And had to laugh to myself because I felt like I was the only one that was pretty much freaking out when the pose was being explained to us. I mean everyone was nodding their head like .. oh yeah no problem…. but I found out later that some of the girls in the class said that they weren’t just too sure how that whole thing was going to go down and I think secretly they were kind of freaking out too.
So when we finally all tried it guess what the instructor told us? She said that this is a pose that we all probably should be practicing at home before the next class 🙂
I think that’s kind of funny.