Tuesday is yoga night for me, and for the first time ever I’m taking more than one session of yoga consecutively. All told I think I’ve taken about six different yoga classes over the past four years, but I’ve always stopped when the session is over. I’ve done pre-natal, post-natal and a couple of different kinds of classes that I can’t tell you about because I’m so ignorant about yoga that I don’t know what type they were.
A friend introduced me to Helga Beer when I was pregnant with Elliot. I couldn’t get in because her classes were full, but I ended up taking a pre-natal one with her when I was pregnant with Amy. It sucked. It was in the evening, I was exhausted, and I didn’t feel like moving at all. I attended sporadically. But it wasn’t Helga’s fault. I really liked her, so I tried a post-natal session after Amy was born, and enjoyed it. But then Amy started moving so post-natal wasn’t going to work, and then life got busy and yada, yada, yada.
Finally in September my hamstrings yelled loud enough about how tight they were, and I signed up for an eight week session, again with Helga. According to her website we do Hatha yoga, but she doesn’t focus a whole lot on specific poses. There are a handful we do, but most of the class seems to be about stretching and strengthening.
I decided to finally commit to doing yoga regularly and signed up for the next session, which started tonight. I have to say that I usually dread going. It would be easier if I went directly from work, but I come home, have dinner, get all into “at home” mode, and then have to go out again. She has several classes, but Tuesday night was the only one that really fit into the schedule.
Once I’m there it’s okay, but not fantastic. The 90 minutes goes by fairly slowly, and sometimes it feels like all I’m doing is yawning. I really like Helga’s style, I think it’s just yoga in general that I’m not wild about. But I know it’s good for me and I’m going to try to stick with it. I want to one day be able to touch my toes without bending my legs.
And tonight I had a thought. When I first started running I felt pretty ambivalent about it. I started running because it was an easy way to get exercise, and I ran for at least a year before I really started to enjoy it. So maybe it’ll come.