Spirituality

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         In my opinion, yoga is not taught as a spiritual practice. Though it does absolutely encourage the person doing the yogato dig deeper within, I believe non spiritual people would be able to do a practice and not feel as though they are missing something. Yoga does not preach, it only encourages. I say that because often the sentences during meditation time do not start with “you should” or commands, they are often suggestions. This makes a difference than commands because it allows the person performing to not feel as though they are doing something wrong. IF they don't want to do the action, that is also perfectly fine. 


There are spiritual aspects to the process of learning yoga, however. It's training the body as well as the mind. It took me about halfway through the semester before I REALLY learned how to calm my mind enough to focus on the postures only. It took me the entire semester to train my body well enough to be able to handle some of the more intense postures. It is a game of understanding and failing and then failing some more. Within the understanding part is where spirituality can, but not always, make a difference. Understanding where you are in the world, good or bad, and feeling okay with it. Spirituality of yoga gives the person attempting to do the yoga a real reason and new perspective on WHY exactly they are doing the yoga to begin with. 


  This week’s yoga 60 minutes yoga session was intense. I decided to challenge myself, especially because last week I decided to do a practice with light movement and mostly meditation. This week was HARD. I spent way too much time trying to balance, honestly. Also, I was sweating in the first 10 minutes. I'd like to think I am a very active person who is in shape, but lord did I not expect that. On another note, I managed to balance my whole body in a frog- like position on only my hands. Pretty epic. Though this week was especially hard, I feel like I improved wildly compared to the beginning of the semester. Looking back on my first yoga practice to my last yoga practice for the semester, I am wildly impressed with how far I have come in my endeavours. I realize spirituality may not only be mental, as well, for it is a physical concept especially seen in everyday life.

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