Doing the yoga

The paucity of updates about stress relief by practicing yoga has been due to the added stress of having laptop problems. Now that the laptop is functioning again, I can write about my thoughts on yoga.

I think my biggest problem with yoga is that I am doing yoga to relieve stress on command rather than just doing it when I feel like relaxing. I got to the point where I was ready for bed and remembered that I had to do yoga to help my mental health status. So I would rush through some sun salutes and stretches then brush teeth and go to bed. At the point when I failed to keep my balance during a pyramid pose, I had to stop and think for a bit. I was realizing my problem with this yoga stress relief intervention. This was something that I actually had to work at to incorporate into my daily life, as opposed to exercise for stress relief. I am used to running on a semi-daily basis as is, which I continue to do to stay in shape even though I’ve switched interventions. But yoga is something that is new to my life and incorporating it has been a struggle. This is the goal of this project. I’m finally getting at the meat of this project and struggling with what I’m supposed to have been struggling with since the start of this project.

I am also finding it frustrating to feel like I’m being forced to do something for an extrinsic reason rather than an intrinsic reason. This mostly happens when I remember to do yoga before bed and rush through it. It’s also frustrating when my form is bad and I lose balance while doing yoga. I realize it’s because yoga is meant to be slow and focused on form and breath and when I rush through it so I can check off that I did yoga for the day I’m not actually succeeding at my intervention.

In retrospect I wish I had designed my project so that I would consistently use exercise as a means of stress relief because that would have fit better within my existing lifestyle. But that is not the point of this project. This project was meant to challenge me and force me to adopt a lifestyle change. Doing yoga has definitely been a change. It’s not the first thing my mind leaps to when I think of ways to calm down. But it makes sense that I’m trying new things in my life, which is the entire point of this project.