Yoga

Thursday night is yoga night

A lot of people raise eye-brows when I mention yoga but it is an essential part of the training and one of the hardest work-outs. A lot of the class have come to yoga through injury or martial arts and it is interesting to see perceptions fall aside and be replaced by a real passion for yoga.

Our teacher is an inspirational teacher and I often find myself mulling over his nuggets of wisdom and using them in other aspects of my training. This combined with the hard physical practise that is yoga gives an additional dimension to training (and the ability to do hand-stands on a whim comes in handy more often than you would reasonably expect…)

From my limited understanding of yoga everything stems from the breath and controlling this. Once you master this and remember to listen to the breath a whole new world of physical practise opens up (though true yogi may counter that I have this in reverse). Many times, whilst out grinding out some miles, I have gone back to this thought, listened to be breath, and felt the tiredness slip away.

However, most yogis I know don’t take themselves too seriously as illustrated by the joke told to me at the last yoga work-shop I went on:

A student went to his meditation teacher and said, "My meditation is horrible! I feel so distracted, or my legs ache, or I'm constantly falling asleep. It's just horrible!"

"It will pass," the teacher said matter-of-factly.

A week later, the student came back to his teacher.

"My meditation is wonderful! I feel so aware, so peaceful, so alive! It's just wonderful!"

"It will pass," the teacher replied matter-of-factly.