I thought I should just think about how I started to practice yoga.
I went to my first ever yoga class when I was at university and HATED it! I think it was Iyengar but who knows…. i just felt very irritated by the teacher all of the time.
Then years later, well about five, I saw an article about yoga holidays in the newspaper and just decided to go on one, in at the deep end so to speak.
That was astanga inspired although not mysore, all lead but based on the primary series, my first introduciton to the joys of the mari’s! my teacher there was a student of alex medin at the time and had the most beautiful inspiring practice, his whole back was like an anatomy lesson you could see all of the muscles.
Later back at home I started to practice once a week at the local YMCA, with lead classes i did this for about two years going back for another yoga holiday in 2004 after that I began to go to two classes a week.
work prevailed a bit and in 2005 I began to look at mysore classes where I live, I tried out a few places, including one where I got injured by the teacher on the first class, err not going back there….. that and all of the talk of putting you mat in the right place not interfering with the energy of more expereience practitioners hmmm was all a bit much.
work interveened and it wasn’t until a year later that I started to look again, I was inspired by all of the Astangi.net blogs and decided to take the plunge initally by evening mysore then decided that I would commit myself in my mind to six months of morning mysore to see how it went, while that was the end of january and well I’ve managed to make it four times a week at least since then.. so I’m not doing badly.
At the moment I’m stuck at Mari C and I think I will be for a while… much yanking, and I still can’t be put in on the first side although the left side seems possible. Well I guess I really know If I lost a few pounds it would be more possible, somehow I’m finding making myself go to mysore easier to stick to that a diet. I guess one bit of will power at a time.
