Greatly encouraged by my lovely wife, I decided to start taking Yoga classes in the local gym this year. I must say my first classes were long painful lessons in my body’s inflexibility. Yet, as I stuck with it, I come to enjoy it and sense an impact not just in my physical but also mental and spiritual health. In this blog, I reflect on how practicing Yoga as little as twice a week has come to be an important practice in my spiritual walk.
I Suck at Yoga and that’s Good
For starters, I am not the athletic type. I would much rather read than go to the gym. Yes, I am a bona fide nerd who realized I was more than a head on a stick. Recently, I’ve been reluctantly taking on physical exercise because I know it is good for me. It feels like eating raw vegetables. As I get older, I realize that sedentary behaviors won’t help me live long. Also, I come to enjoy the endorphins that get released after an exercise session.
It goes without saying that my flexibility is fairly limited. In class, doing some of the poses move muscles I didn’t even know I had. Furthermore, I still cannot tell left from right without looking at my hands. So, when the teacher describes the next pose, it might as well be Greek. I get by through watching more advanced practitioners beside me. Often times, I find myself turning right when everybody else it turning left. That is when I delicately and slowly correct my position.
Needless to say, it is a humbling experience to join a class where people are lot more advanced than I am. As I am straining to balance or simply stretch, I am surrounded by master Yogis who turn their bodies into pretzels. That is when I think to myself: “Are you fu&%$ing kidding me?” Yes, lately most of my spiritual experiences have been accompanied by under-breath cussing.
I say this not just to amuse but to highlight the fact that doing something I suck at is actually a good thing. It serves to humble me while also destroying my illusions of competency and self-reliance. Slowly, I am learning to embrace the suckiness as I drench my mat with sweat while others stretch much further with little effort. Besides, I am not setting out to be a master yogi. I just want to learn to breathe.
Yoga is not Just Exercise
I suspected that there was more to Yoga then uncomfortable stretches. This only became more clear as I started practicing it. The class starts and ends with mindfulness exercises where we are quieting ourselves and focused on breathing. This is no “transcendental meditation” but it is baby steps to help us connect mind and body. As mentioned above, now that this nerd is discovering that he is more than a head, connecting with the body is becoming an important centering activity. It is so easy to ignore our bodies are when we forget that we are above all breathing beings.
Often times I have experienced a strong sense of peace and calm after a class. I’ll move slower, be less worried and at times become a better human to my wife and kids. This has been a great antidote for the anxiety I feel on the weekends. Usually, my week is intense between family, work, reading and writing. Yet, when the weekend comes, I feel a bit lost not knowing what to do with myself. Hence, doing Yoga on Saturday mornings has really helped smooth out anxiety and help structure the weekend.
I also sense that the effects of it lingers. First, I usually feel sore for the rest of the day but it is a satisfying soreness. It is like I pride myself in making these muscles work. At times, I have also noticed being more aware of what is going on emotionally with myself and even be more present. For someone who often lives in the clouds of ideas and future plans, anything that helps me be in the present is a big positive.
Walking into Uncharted Territory
When I wonder why I didn’t try this before, I know exactly why. In my evangelical upbringing, Yoga was considered a dangerous practice from a competing religion. What I experience today could scarcely classify as that. My Yoga teacher does not emphasize its Hindu roots. Just like Chinese food in America, it is a westernized, secularized, watered down version of the original Hindu practice.
Yet, regardless of that, I still catch myself feeling jealous by the fact that it came from a different religion than Christianity. Why couldn’t our traditions figure this out? Why did we insist on head-knowledge practices that do little for the body? There is historical precedent for meditation in the practices of Middle Age Christian mystics. Yet, that is not the same as full body practice that helps connect mind, body and spirit. In view of this realization, I wish I had discovered this earlier.
In this spiritual journey, sometimes I am finding the answers outside of the gates of familiar Christian teachings. I don’t see this is an endorsement of Hinduism as a religions but a recognition that they know something we don’t. I would be spiritually poorer if I ignored their contribution and wisdom.
In all sincerity, I found that practicing Yoga has made me a healthier human being. In some ways, it has also helped my relationship with God. As I become more self-aware, I am also better able to hear the Spirit’s voice who often whispers quietly. That whisper can often be drawn out by the noises around and inside me. It is in learning to slow down and breath again that I am also finding my way back to the Giver of breath.