The yoga experiment ends... and, Pace - THAT Pace!

Yesterday, I did the final written workout of my 8 week yoga program.  Wendy asked in the comments why I decided to do the program in the first place, and actually I’ve been reflecting on that a lot over the past few days.  That, and trying to assess what I’ve gotten out of the program and to decide where to take things from here (if anywhere).

The whys:  Yoga has always been one of those things that has never been what I expected or wanted it to be. I was introduced to it when I was young; my folks took yoga classes at the local high school back in the 70’s in what I call their somewhat hippy-dippy era, and my mother did some yoga TV show (Lilias?).  I had this impression that by doing the movements and - something, whatever - you reached some wonderful, relaxed, contemplative state in which you could - something, I don’t know.  Cure cancer?  Develop a nuclear fission reactor?  Move paperweights using telekenesis?  Eventually I just looked to it to be something that would help me relax and possibly get to sleep easier, as I’ve never been great at relaxing or getting to sleep.

Basically, it’s been fail on all of the above counts - for me, anyway, and I sort of doubt Fermi, et als used yoga in their work on nuclear fission, although you never know.  But for some reason, that itch, that curiosity about the potential of yoga, has nagged at me for years.  I’ve tried doing it and enjoying it for its own sake, and I do, to a point.  It’s a little less boring than stretching, although it’s not enough about stretching to be a full-fledged substitute.  I can end a practise feeling relaxed - and I can end a practise annoyed as hell.  And that started happening fairly often toward the end of my little 8 week program. 

Why?  This one took me a while to figure out.  It wasn’t so much the poses; he showed mods for headstand and handstand (basically, for me, that meant doing them against a wall), and everything else I could usually do right off the bat (the so-called flexible beginner thing).  BUT everything was held for a timed duration, and seldom did he use number of breaths as the hold times.  He did encourage you to determine number of breaths for the common hold times for yourself, and I did use this for holds of under a minute.  For hold over a minute, I used a timer.  Now, I have no problems holding poses long enough to get something out of them (usually, a feeling of extension or a bit of release somewhere), but if you’re counting breaths or waiting for a timer to go off, after a while... it gets old, and it interrupts any semblance of a flow you might establish (although Iyengar yoga is not about flow).  I am also not that into props, and don’t like dragging out blocks, bolsters, blankets, straps, and chairs so I can basically flop around on the floor.  Interesting to a point, but it also becomes distracting and, yes, annoying. 

What I found was that I could come out of the shorter, less involved practises that did not include a lot of restorative poses feeling a bit more centered and open, and I like that feeling.  I believe I have a better handle on my body alignment, am more aware of my asymmetries and imbalances, and have learned how to create a little bit of meditative space that I can use to help keep my crazy in check.  And frankly, that’s probably enough to have endured the whole program (which, quite honestly, up until the end really was a pleasure to do for the most part).  So, I’m glad I did do it, but I’m also happy it’s over.

I’m still not sure where I’m going to take things from here.  My rough idea is to keep doing a practise - probably a media practise - on Monday, continue in my class on Wednesday, and if I feel like it, revisit something from the book on Friday.

Yesterday was noteworthy for another reason:  I had a pace run.  It was supposed to be 5 miles at race pace.  Because I’ve been failing big time in doing pace runs at pace, I decided to approach the thing slightly differently, and set up an out and back course with just two check points: one at the halfway (turn-around) point, obviously, plus one at the quarter point.  I added about a half-mile of warm-up space to the beginning of the run and just loosely tracked time from there.  It was a somewhat hilly course with a couple of long grades so it was unrealistic to expect to be exactly on time at each marker, so I just kept a loose gauge on pace.  And you know what?  I did the whole thing, including the warm-up, at what turned out to average EXACTLY half marathon pace.  To the second.  Freaky, huh?