When people ask me how long I have been practising yoga, I usually say, “Ten years. The first five years on and off but I have been attending a class once or twice a week for the last five.”
However, I actually first tried yoga when I was 15. Yoga was offered as an option for sport, and not being very athletic, it seemed a perfect choice for me. Unfortunately we had to choose a different sport for the next term and then it was never offered again for my year. I didn't realise how enamoured I was with yoga until I came across these notes.
The ‘warm up’ sequence is actually a form of surya namaskara (salute to the sun). I remember borrowing a book from the school library at about the same time, so this either came from the book or was a sequence that we were taught.
Similarly with the following relaxation sequence: it is either from the book or a sequence we were taught.
Even back then I was concerned with relaxation practices!
I also illustrated a number of asanas. I didn't know there were so many different tree poses.
These notes were the basis of my own home practice but, as seems to have happened most of my life, life got in the way. School, university, and then work took priority until the stresses of corporate life sent me back to meditation and yoga 15-20 years later. Arriving in the U.S. after 9/11 and visiting Nepal suggested that there was more to life than what I had known. And I have been learning what that is ever since.
Do you know what brought you to yoga or started you on your journey?
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments for posts older than 14 days will not immediately display. These comments are reviewed before they are published for public display.