Morning and Evening practice consist of yoga, meditation and as we went through the week, added in chanting and breathing exercises. As I have not spent much time at all at yoga and essentially none at meditation (visualizing was something we did in swimming but meditation is completely different), to say I had trepidations was an understatement.
The first evening practice had all 30 people doing yoga, then chanting, working on breathing, chanting, sitting still in a seated position that is literally my nightmare due to knees being in a bent position without moving, oh and more chanting. This was a lot more than I expected and was trying hard not to imagine the Kool-Aid drink to come at the end of the week.
Considering that I had come all this way and had the opportunity to learn from the center and the very experienced yoga teachers, I decided to give it a try and see what it was all about. Yoga practice was better than I had expected and as a new practioner, they didn’t make anything too complicated or too advanced that newbies couldn’t follow along. And considering it is also a workout, I was happy to fully participate.
Meditation on the other hand….I am not sure if I will become a novice let alone a practitioner. Trying to get over the pain of the seated position is still not a place I have found in order to get into that “no mind” state. Since it is still early (aka Day 1) I will see if I feel the same in 5 days.
Update: No I don’t. I was truly not able to ever get over the pain though I was able to make it up to around 12 min or so still before feeling like my legs weren’t ever going to recover and through the extensive use of doing math in my head to not move. Establishing a daily routine might still occur in terms of the breathing exercises and getting to a still zone but I will need to find a position that works for me that has nothing to do with sitting cross legged for 30 min at a time.
