#5: The breathing in Yoga

This one is for all the ‘beginner’ to ‘mediocre’ yoga-goers out there…the first time in a yoga class is intimidating. Whether it’s Yoga, Bikram yoga or Pilates, there’s a lot to decide before even getting to the class. You have to worry about the mat, if you need a towel or not, decide what the appropriate attire is. As well as what do you bring, water, no water, water in a klean kanteen…etc…there’s a lot to worry about. 

Then once you get from the pre yoga worries you actually get to the yoga location and have to start worrying about the positions…

Downward facing dog, what?

Child’s pose…no thanks.

Warrior 1 and 2… honestly those don’t even sound like positions I could pretend to recreate…

Then to make it even harder you just aren’t that flexible…. This whole peaceful yoga experience seems just like an awkward situation to start with.

Then once you start going and you get the basic positions worked out after 5 minutes of figuring out just how far you move you feet and arms all while trying to discretely sneak glances at your fellow yoga-ers, you hear your first ‘breath in, breath out’ instruction. You, as most people may think to do, do the ‘doctor’s appointment’ breath in, breath out instruction. You know the one when the doctor has a stethoscope and you deeply inhale and then deeply exhale. Seems simple enough….or does it?

You take your first inhaled breath everything’s still pretty normal, nothing to worry about. Then once you let your guard down and start to exhale, you hear it. Everyone around starts hissing out these sounds as if the evil spirits are literally being released from their bodies….  Honestly, I’m not even really sure how to make the sound or where it comes from (some peaceful Zen place I have yet to find) but it’s not natural. At this point it just stops being relaxing and turns into pure panic…who are these people and what happened to those nice, relaxed yoga people I hear about?

At this point it’s your choice. Do I leave now, and be the pansy that walks out of a Yoga class? Do I stay and most likely start laughing? (Which is probably worse than actually walking out) or do I suck it up and try to get into the stress free (questionable) zone that all these hissing people apparently are at?

I leave this one up to you guys and let the Zen gods be with you.