My Final Anaylsis

Disappointing as it may be I have fallen off my training for a while now. I have really come to terms that I was overwhelmed with trying to do all my school work and also maintain my journal entrees. As I progressed through this semester I have come to understand a few things about Yoga that has helped me in more ways then one.

I first started out by going each week to the practice the school provided. As I started going I did notice that the meditation period before hand was more difficult to do then the actual yoga itself.

As the time continued I started noticing that the person who was leading the class was very boring, having studied with my professor and doing practices that really started to push my physical comfortability is what really made me want to get into yoga more.

Unfortunately as I was not able to practice as much as I wanted but after I stopped going to the classes I started to talk to one of my classmates who suggested that the reason I was not able to really ‘get in’ to a routine because of my lack of ability to mediate.

 At first I didn’t listen to him, but as my life started to come apart as I lost my car and was dealing with losing a significant amount of my savings, I started to mediate more and more in the morning before I started my day. The amounts of anxiety grew as time went on and I didn’t know how to cope with this new experience. But as a meditated I was able to clear my thoughts and learn how to focus on what point for a significant amount of time. These times of clarity gave me the ability to get my work done and maintain the mental work load doing so many things at one time.

I mediate quite readily now. Justin described it to me as not making it a thing but just do it when it needs to be done. Ambiguous as it may  seem it makes more sense to me now.

The other benefit that I got from doing yoga was the ability to be at one with my body. Before I would not be able when I felt my heart race  or when I feel pain that otherwise my mind would just tune out. I feel the weight of myself that before I would be in denial about. These things I feel like are what is making me change my diet and starting to get more aware of when it comes to my health. Yoga really put me in tune with something that before I was not aware of. I believe that some of the philosophical ideals that the teachings of yoga bring are very insightful and can challenge any person who finds themselves ingulfed in the western philosophical schools of thought.

What do I think of yoga?

Well to make sense of what that would take more then an blog journal, but my understanding of yoga is that yoga is practice. Whether it be the postures or mediation or whatever form you choose to practice. Yoga is that at which it is meant to be a path to becoming one with the divine.

That being said the way that yoga is portrayed in my society is something completely different then what it was suppose to be . When I tell people I do yoga most times it’s met with suspicious looks as I was lying or maybe my intentions of doing yoga was something nefarious because I being a big man . I am only doing yoga to score brownie points with a bunch of girls or maybe I am a creep. These things I felt being conveyed in conversations as I explained the wonderful things that yoga can do for people. A lot of the people I talked to would say things like “Must be a lotta girls in that class eh?’ and “Whoa big guy like you doing yoga?” These were more common in my conversations with people who were not in my friend circle. As I come to realize that yoga in American society is something that has been marketed towards women and with this there are stereotypes that follow.

The medicinal aspect and sister sciences that come along with yoga are something that interested me because some of the things that are related to yoga like astrology and Ayurvedic practices are so readily accepted by society but in most cases disregarded by western medicine. People are so quick to look at horoscopes and judge their lives off what they say but in the same breath are so quick to discredit some of the claims that yoga brings.

As I read through the Bhagavad Gita I come to understand some of the teachings that Krishna tells Arjuna. People struggle with having to do what is needed to be done. The fact that this man was tasked with killing his kinsman and he was so perplexed on what he should do speaks to me. Not because I need to kill my kinsman but I see myself and what is going to be required of me to fulfill my duty makes me feel for Arjuna. The way of action in the Bhagavad Gita showed me that everything in life requires action. My own action. It would be better for me to stand up and do what  I need to do and die then sit and follow someone else for the rest of my life. I cannot be non-acting  because even non action is still an action.

Overall the practices that Dr.Greene had us do were all very insightful and showed me that my favorite style of yoga that I have practiced was Iyengar Yoga, I hope to one day join an studio that practices, All of the teachers made me buy in to what they were offering and I enjoyed it very much. As I stated previously I am very disappointed in falling off my practice, but I have gained something worth more then a letter grade.