Final Blog Post

            Taking the Yoga: East Meets West course was a fun and life-long experience that I will carry with me forever. I learned what the actual meaning of yoga is and how beneficial it is to take part in. I am glad that I learned what I did about yoga and I am thankful that I physically participated in a yoga class via Zoom each week. I feel that taking this course and participating in a yoga class each week made me better mentally and physically. Taking this yoga class and journaling about my experience made it more serious to me than I thought it would have been when I first signed up for this course. I am glad that I journaled about my experience because it allows me to look back on my experience with starting yoga and introducing yoga into my daily life.

When I took my first yoga class, my first journal entry was about how the environment was of the yoga instructor’s yoga studio and how the yoga instructor carried out the class. When I wrote my first journal, I spoke about how the yoga instructor spoke very calmly and soothingly. How the room was extremely quiet with no background noise whatsoever. How the yoga instructor was so descriptive with every movement and position. The yoga instructor made the positions and movements easy to understand how to do. The instructor kept telling the class when to inhale and exhale during the motions. She also kept referring to how parts of the body remain aligned with the heart. I honestly enjoyed my first ever yoga class and I felt very relaxed afterwards. What I really liked that the instructor kept saying during the class was that there really was no right or wrong way to do yoga, it's more about keeping an open heart and an open mind when performing it. Throughout the class I felt like my mind was soothed and the stretches felt good to do. I have never done yoga before and I have not seriously stretched in a long time, so it felt good for my body. I was very happy with my first ever yoga experience and I continued to enjoy each and every yoga class I participated in.

            The next couple of weeks after that I journaled about the studio as a ritual space and yoga as physical culture. What I learned was that what made my practice space a "sacred space" was that it needed to be completely silent. The only noise in the room that I could hear was the instructors voice explaining what to do. Having lots of windows with sunlight pouring in made me enjoy the yoga more and made my yoga practices feel like more of a ritual. I enjoyed there being plants and greenery in the room as well. I found pictures of nature around the studio to be calming as well. I also learned from myself that the rules that are to be followed to make my practice space a "sacred space" are that everyone stayed quiet and allowed the instructor to speak. I also felt that there should not be any interruptions like cell phones going off or anything like that. I felt that the time spent while performing yoga should be uninterrupted and focused. I felt that other aspects that created an opportunity for ritual experience are clearing one's mind and leaving all stresses and worries at the door before entering a yoga studio or performing yoga. I felt that being focused on the movements and clearing the mind during a yoga session better the ability to have ritualistic yoga experience. By this second week of taking yoga classes each week I felt that I was starting to develop a better understanding of how yoga was to be performed.

            During the third week of my yoga experience, the theme of yoga that I was focused on was yoga as physical culture and how it betters the body physically. I learned that yoga is definitely framed as more than just exercise and that yoga instructors try to incorporate the mind and body in yoga sessions. Many people who participate in the practice of yoga feel that it cleanses the body and mind of impurities and rejuvenates the soul and at this point of my yoga journey I could slightly understand how people interpret yoga in that way. I learned that yoga is known for being just as healthy mentally and spiritually as it is physically. The ways in which my yoga instructor spoke about the importance of yoga to my class was that yoga can "empower" you and clear your mind of any stress or mental obstacles and help you see more clearly in order to overcome mental blocks throughout life. I felt that yoga can "empower" one by building physical strength and feeling a difference in one's overall physicality and health, thus leading one to feel an improvement mentally due to the improvement in physical health. By this week of participating in yoga sessions I developed the understanding of how yoga can be an “empowering” physical activity.

            The fourth week that I journaled about my yoga journey was focused on the theme of practice as ritual. During this time, I felt that my practice might be analyzed as a "ritual" using a certain lighting I used every time and mat that I used each time I performed my yoga sessions. I noticed that yoga instructors would have music or sound effects in the background when they led their classes or they would burn incents or something only that they do that is signature to them, and they would do this each class. I learned that the practice of yoga could be analyzed as a "ritual" because each time one performed yoga, they would use the same props they have each time, or they would use the same mat every time or even play the same song each time they performed. It was interesting to learn about how yoga can be looked at as a ritual because there are infinite ways to customize one's yoga experience, therefore, there are infinite ways to create one’s ritual space. I learned that yoga was looked at as more than just a physical activity to keep one’s self in good shape and that there is way more to yoga than meets the eye. Yoga has a ritualistic aspect to it how each an individual performs yoga they do the same thing every time using the same materials and objects in order to make their very own personalized ritual.

            After the fifth week of participating in a yoga class I journaled about the yoga practice as a community. I felt that my practice space promoted a sense of community and that the community of yoga participants felt good and welcoming. I felt that the yoga community itself was a very understanding community that accepted all new people and beginners to yoga. My yoga instructor of my class once spoke about how the purpose of the yoga community was to feel this way so that anyone, new to yoga or not, could join in and participate and gain the benefits of practicing yoga. It made sense to me that the purpose of how the yoga community was and how it benefited the yoga studio by having people join and it benefited its participants by allowing everyone in the yoga community to feel accepted and feel like they are a part of something more than just a yoga class. Through my yoga journey I felt like I entered a new community that I enjoyed being a part of. I learned a lot about myself physically and mentally and I feel that through practicing yoga I bettered both aspects of myself.

            My sixth week of my yoga journal I focused my journaling on yoga as healing and how it is used as medicine. I learned that yoga was seen as a healing practice at my practice space because it cleared my mind and physically stretched and relaxed my body more than any other means of stretching or relaxation. Before taking this yoga course I already knew that going to the gym every day and lifting weights tightens and stiffens my muscles and yoga was my therapy afterwards at the end of each week. I felt that yoga was better than medicine because it relieved my body of any aches and pains that I used to take pain killers for. I would usually take Ibuprofen or Acetaminophen for my muscle soreness and aches, but with yoga I realized that it relieved my body of those feelings. I learned that the idea that yoga was medicine was part of most of my classes that I participated in. Most of the yoga instructors I had during my yoga sessions spoke on how yoga was better if not just as good as medicine. During this sixth week period I noticed that after doing yoga I felt that my body was stretched out and relaxed. I felt that my mind was clearer than ever and that my brain and body felt at ease. Performing yoga definitely helped me rid my body of any stresses and worries that I had before taking part in yoga classes via Zoom. After doing yoga I felt as if I had bettered myself and I truly enjoyed doing yoga because it made me feel better internally and externally. Looking back at how I thought yoga would not really help my body much physically was wrong of me. Yoga helped my body gain a greater range of motion and flexibility that it had not had since I was a child.

            The seventh and eighth weeks of my yoga journey were focused on yoga as a lifestyle and culture and definitions of yoga. I learned that yoga is a lifestyle to some and to those people yoga is everything to them. Some people perform yoga every day and some people make yoga their lifestyle where they incorporate yoga into their everyday activities and relate things in their life to yoga and its principles. I also learned that yoga originated in India and was brought over and taught in the United States where it became part of the popular culture. Yoga has made an impact on my life in such a short period of time and I can understand how after it was brought over from India to the United States that it made such an impact on the culture here. As yoga developed over the years here in the United States it has developed many definitions to people and each person has developed a different meaning of yoga. Throughout my yoga experience I felt that yoga was like a ritual to me. I defined yoga as a ritual practice, and I looked at it as a meditation. The last three weeks of my yoga journey I tried to strengthen my meditation during my yoga sessions since I was sick and was not able to physically do the movements and postures with my yoga class. Overall, people have different definitions of yoga because everyone views and experiences yoga differently with different attitudes and feelings towards it.

            Throughout my semester-long yoga practice experience I learned more about yoga and the history behind yoga than probably most people who go to practice yoga in an actual yoga studio. I thank my past self for signing up for this yoga course for the benefits that I acquired physically and mentally from performing yoga during this semester-long practice experience. I feel that I have truly bettered myself as a whole and that I am a better person than I was a semester ago. Taking this course and taking part in yoga classes for a semester long have helped me ease my mind and strengthen my conscience when it comes to taking on stress in life. Looking back at my old journals amazed me of how much I actually learned, not only about yoga and the history of yoga, but about myself as a human being mentally and physically. As someone who exercises every day with weightlifting and who has been on a weightlifting grind for six years now, yoga was one of the best forms of physical activity for my overall health that I have ever tried to incorporate in my workout regimen. I am proud to say that I took this course.