This Is Why I Practice Yoga

If you work in an office, there’s probably one thing you have too much of.

Stress.

And another thing you don’t do enough of might just be exercise. My interest in yoga came to fruition because it seemed to promise a partial solution to both of those problems. Here’s why I pay for a yoga membership; it’s expensive, but I love it. I was a chronic gym-hated, but yoga has helped me get routine exercise.

If you’re looking for a type of exercise that will help your general wellness but you haven’t found one you enjoy, yoga is absolutely worth a try.

The variety of classes and postures ensure I won’t be bored.

This is a big one for me; I love to be part of studios that have a wide variety of instructors. I love how I can get a variety of classes at the same difficulty level but that every class has a different feeling and a different routine of postures.

It’s exciting not to know exactly what’s coming next during your hour of exercise. It’s more fun and it makes the necessity to exercise a lot more enjoyable. After all, even workaholics need to take care of themselves, and yoga makes one part of that need more fun.

The focus on mindfulness and relaxation is really important to me.

Even Harvard Health will tell you that yoga has benefits beyond the mat. For me, it’s really helping me to manage stress. I didn’t expect to give two hoots about this. And frankly, even my earliest appreciation of yoga’s emphasis on relaxation was pretty…base.

My first experience with yoga was going to a free outdoor yoga class held by one of my previous employers. It was a fantastic program and the price was right for me, all participants had to do was bring their own mat. I bought a cheap yoga on Amazon, telling myself this $15 investment was me committing myself to a cause, and went to yoga.

My exact thought when the final shavasana — meditating, usually laying down, at the end of a practice — was something along the lines of this.

“Wow, I get to lay down on the ground and close my eyes while I’m on lunch break from work! This is amazing!”

Yeah…not very spiritual or mindful there.

However, as I kept going, as I tried out different studios, I started to really value this. The focus on mindfulness really helps me feel motivated to go to yoga classes. I’m getting more out of it than just physical exercise, what I wrote off as spiritual nonsense at first became something I genuinely looked forward to. It helps me clear my mind and that’s something valuable.

Good instructors will encourage you to take things at your own pace.

It’s a tricky balance between encouraging people to push themselves while also letting them know that if something is too much for them, that’s okay.

The best instructors I’ve followed are particularly understanding about emphasizing that something might not work for you today or at this moment, even if it’s worked for you before.

This may sound like something small, but trust me, it’s not. We all have busy lives with work, family obligations, pets, and whatever other priorities we’re juggling in our lives. Making time for self-care and keeping healthy feels like putting a rotten cherry on top of a stale cake — you just don’t want any of it.

That’s precisely why I appreciate how forgiving yoga can be sometimes.

There’ll be days where you just barely make time to hit the gym or go to a class and you’re just too tired to give things your absolute top performance, but if the class is led by a good instructor, they’ll encourage participants to explore their limits without coercing them into it.

This is one reason why I’ve never been able to really enjoy the Crossfit type of classes or any type of group fitness class where the emphasis is on getting as many reps of a certain move in as possible. I know some people where that works for them and kudos to them, but it’s just never resonated with me.

I do want to explore my limits and improve myself, but there are days when just being there is as much as I can manage. In yoga, you can still feel accomplished for just that. There isn’t as agonizing of a push for go, faster, more.

I don’t dread going.

Yoga comes in a lot of different styles and speeds. I am very much your average reluctant gym-goer, so I didn’t think any kind of exercise would make me look forward to going to the gym. However, I do think it’s important to find a good instructor.

Going to the handful of yoga classes offered by a traditional gym will often mean that the instructors are doing other classes besides yoga. These types of instructors are more likely to have that go, faster, more quality, and won’t really bother with imbuing the lessons with motivation, inspiration, and positivity.

It’s possible that you will find some excellent instructors like that at a regular gym. My first yoga class was actually at a regular gym, but one of the three instructors was actually very, very experienced teaching yoga and she did an absolutely amazing job. So it’s not impossible!

The main reason I’m saying this is because it’s easy to go to one class, feel unimpressed, and decide that yoga is not for you. If you’ve experienced this, give it another whirl at a different studio. It’s really shocking how different the experience will be at different studios and gyms.

The focus on positivity really is uplifting.

If you spend a few hours a week hearing about how you should honor what your body wants, do what feels good, and pace yourself when you need to, you’re going to internalize some of those positive messages.

I don’t consider myself a particularly religious or spiritual person, but I actually really do enjoy the strong vibe of positivity that’s present in every class. It makes paying for what boils down to being group fitness classes feel a lot more worth it. A good yoga class is something special compared to your typical group classes.

In a way, yoga can help improve to sense of self-esteem and it reminds you to take care of yourself. As you’re learning the importance of saying “no” when life throws you things that are too much to handle, the extra push of positivity from yoga really helps.

Yoga is a big help for aches and pains, but it's important to be patient when learning.

Unless you’re doing hot, power yoga, or any strength-building focused variant like ashtanga, then practicing isn’t going to suddenly make you drop pounds of weight and put on tons of muscle. Those changes take time and dedicated practice. It’s good to start out with beginner courses, but there are a lot of different major types of yoga, and the kinds you’ll do as a beginner aren’t going to burn quite as many calories as more rigorous forms of cardio and strength training.

I will be honest, I didn’t see much of a change in my weight when I was only going to the slower, easier yoga classes. I physically felt better and I got more flexible, which was great, but the scale wasn’t really budging much until I started dieting in conjunction with practicing yoga.