my two weeks practicing yoga

For the past two weeks I have been taking classes at CorePower Yoga Studio. The classes offered there are yoga based, heated classes that engage the entire body. Throughout my time there, I engaged in different levels of yoga, hot power fusion and yoga sculpt. I tried to vary the times of day I went and the classes that I took to get the full experience. These are the main things I gathered from my two weeks of practice.

An intention based approach to life

In previous yoga classes, I have always drawn a blank when the instructor asks the class to set an intention. However, doing these classes has pushed me to think of intentions for my practice and my life. The one intention that has particularly stuck with me is pushing past the point of safety. When I do inversions, such as crow pose, I am afraid to lift both feet off the ground and trust my body. I will lift one foot at a time or go on my tippy toes, pushing myself five feet away from the edge of a symbolic cliff but then retreating. This is also something I do in life, pushing myself out of my comfort zone while remaining in my safety zone. I have set an intention to push myself to the edge of the symbolic cliff. My hope for myself in the coming months is that I will be able to release fear and push to my full capacity in order to achieve my goals.

An elevated mood

As cheesy as this sounds, I have approached almost every situation with positivity and made a greater effort to be a positive presence around my friends and peers. I have also been able to think about conflicts in the grander sense. Being able to approach difficult situations with the understanding of what is important in the totality of life has helped me to process negative feelings in a healthier manner. To put it in simple terms: I don’t sweat the small stuff.

Becoming a positive influence on myself

Never in my adult life have I been so recharged. My mind felt crystal clear and I was incredibly motivated to do even the most mundane activities. I do not have a single domestic bone in my body. I would rather run six miles than clean my house, but the weekend after my first full week in yoga I deep cleaned three rooms in my house and have managed to maintain cleanliness. I was more efficient at work and in the classroom, almost as if a fog of laziness had been lifted off of me.

Full-body fatigue

For me, yoga is not something that works for my body when I do it daily. Since I was doing a two week trial of CorePower, I wanted to make sure I got in as many classes as I could and only skipped two out of fourteen days. I truly think approaching these two weeks with such intensity is the reason my body is so tired and sore. Normally, yoga refreshes my body, opening up and stretching different spaces that I typically ignore. However, the amount of repetition and lack of rest days took a toll on my body physically by the middle of the second week.

Slight boredom

Due to the repetition of practicing daily, I started to get slightly bored with the classes. I tried to continue to push myself harder in every class and to switch up the type of class I was taking, but I inevitably felt a little exhausted with the positions and flows. I found myself anticipating certain movements and wanting to do other types of workouts instead of yoga.

Overall, I loved my time at CorePower. In my ideal situation, I would be able to attend their classes three times a week and supplement other types of exercise in between. Out of the entire practice, I believe the meditation aspect has been the most beneficial for me. I will continue to meditate daily, even if it is not during a yoga practice.

If you take anything from this post make it this: try to incorporate meditation into your daily routine and, if you can, do the $9 two week trial at CorePower!!

xoxo,

lexy