Yoga Plug

I've just gotta put in my little plug for yoga so bear with me here. I took my first yoga class in 2011 during my sophomore year of college (yeesh! That makes me feel old to say that) I didn't really know what I was doing but yoga was supposed to be relaxing and heaven knows I needed to relax! Also, it was supposed to be the cool thing that all the sophisticated people were doing so I just HAD to see what the hype was about. Needless to say, I really enjoyed it! Obviously not enough to stick with it hardcore or become a yoga instructor or anything awesome like that but I loved the way I felt afterwards. Well I recently started up again just a couple days a week following some YouTube classes (<3 Yoga With Adriene. She's awesome!) and it's been great. But I was doing some meta-cognition (yay for being able to use a word they taught you in high school English but that you never thought you would be able to actually use) and trying to figure out why I enjoy yoga so much. And here's what I came up with... Oh and for those of you who aren't weirdos about words like me, meta-cognition, put simply, means "thinking about your thinking" or "thinking about the way you think" Something along those lines.

There's a quote floating around and I've seen it attributed to several people but since I don't know who actually coined it I'm just going to go with the masses and say that it came from C.S. Lewis. The quote is;

I like this quote because it points out the fact that who I am is my soul. My consciousness, my awareness, my identity originates not from the body but from the soul. Kinda weird to think. But don't worry, your body isn't just like a car that you drive around while you're alive. You'll get it back after you die (feel free to ask me about it if that sounds totally loony to you ;)). Back to the topic though. The point of introducing -or reintroducing- this quote is that I feel like most of the time we just use our bodies. We go about our day and through our routine without really being aware of the awesome bodies we have! Unless we are experiencing some pain in one section or another. That's what yoga does for me. It helps bring awareness to my body. The things I don't really think about. The tips of my fingers and toes. The tension in the backs of my knees. The position of my shoulder blades. Ya know... the weird stuff that most normal people don't think about.  But that's why I LOVE it! I ran on the cross country and track teams in high school and I had a little bit of body awareness (usually of my knees or muscles) but nothing like with yoga. I'm not very good at many of the poses and I'm nowhere near yogi status but I would definitely recommend yoga to anyone who is kind of curious to know what it means to be aware of your body. Just try it... like 3 or 4 times before you decide to hate it. But just remember that yoga is more about finding what feels good (with correct alignment of course) than being perfect at every- or in my case, any- pose :)