20/06/2024
🥳 Happy International Yoga Day
Guaranteed to make you smile, re sharing my very first blog, Melbourne, 2015:
** Yoga is for Lazy People ** 🤪🤣...and I had no hesitation saying this to my clients. After all I was a kickass Personal Trainer, who got great joy in motivating my clients to do burpees & box jumps.
Yoga was just some stretching & whoever didn’t man up and do the burpees would drift towards yoga, right?
Don’t get me wrong...it’s not like I didn’t know what yoga was all about. I was born & brought up in India, the birthplace of yoga!
Yoga was a national sport (after cricket of course...actually neither are).
All the uncles and aunties (Yes, that’s how we refer to anyone older than us, no requirement to be related) seemed to do yoga daily or had a yoga teacher or discussed the different breathing techniques of yoga (Breathing....really....why would you need different “techniques” to just breathe?!).
My parents had a private yoga tutor for as long as I can remember who came to our home, dressed in a sari. I was told to join in the sessions, listen and learn. I suspect it was also so that my mother felt she got a “good deal” – no extra charge for the kids.
I remember doing headstands when I was 11 years old (But I can’t remember the yoga teacher doing one herself – maybe the 9 yards of sari fabric came in the way?).
And she taught me breathing (Yes, that again).
And meditate. Borrrrrring!
I just wanted to run out and play with my friends....not waste time breathing in thru' one nostril & out another!!
Fast forward 20 years, I have changed careers from an architect to a successful Personal Trainer, I have achieved remarkable client transformations, I have worked my butt off and I am totally burnt out.
I am taking a bit of a break from my own Training when this hip new yoga studio opens up next to my house....
There seems to be constant bevy of beautiful young women (& hippy looking young men....what IS with all the dreadlocks & facial hair?) going to this studio, so I go along too, to try a few classes.
Must’ve been feeling lazy to do the burpees that day! 😅
I was hooked.
From Day 1. I mean, from day 1 of trying yoga in a “foreign” country by a “white” teacher dressed in a sports bra and tight, slightly transparent tights.... Nothing like a sari.
Was it the chanting of “Om” at the start of the class, the sound of the Universe, or was it setting an intention within myself....an affirmation, revisiting it with each breath (I actually quite enjoyed the “breath work” now because I could re affirm to myself what I felt within me) or was it the strong “exercise” aspect of the class (Sorry, the yogis call it “asanas”, I call it tricep push ups, plank, squat holds, lateral lunges...you get the point), or was it the sweet, sweet relaxation (or snoring, like the guy with the facial hair on the mat besides me) at the end.... whatever it was, I LOVED this Yoga!
I couldn’t believe that I was falling in love with yoga in Australia when I was an Indian, born & brought up in India, who did not enjoy the yoga in her motherland!
As I continued to deep dive into my Yoga practice, I felt a deeper sense of connection, to my friends & family, to nature and to the world at large. I felt calm, more peaceful, more satisfied with myself.
There was work to be done within, certainly not something a lazy person would want to tackle....and work to be done on the outside - I challenge any PT out there to nail a handstand with perfect alignment. That takes strength building.
Gary has just walked in and I ask him if my first blog title "Yoga is for lazy people" catchy enough? His response – “But yoga IS for lazy people”...😂
More work required, I suspect.
Maybe I’ll get him to do 10 burpees first just as a punishment for his poor attitude! LOL
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Happy International Yoga Day again for today.
