This past week, I did a yoga practice with Jason. I tried to get back into running this week as well, I ran on Tuesday and did about three miles. At the end of the run I felt sore, but it felt good to get back into it. The yoga routine served as a good stretch and helped my soreness. Going forward, I would like to continue a regiment of yoga going hand in hand to help my running, focusing more on yoga, and doing running two or three times a week now that the weather is getting warmer. Yoga will help me in the long run maintaining flexibility, and can serve to aid in the event of injury. As a practice space, yoga is a space where one can feel wholesome just about anywhere. From what I have seen, yoga studios and spaces reserved to exclusively yoga itself appear to be empty. I gather that an open yoga space is to create good feng shui, harmonizing individuals with their natural environment. They say that cluttered rooms create bad feng shui as it means there is not good flow or movement of energy in the room. Personally, I don't mind doing yoga a cluttered room. I think yoga is something that can be done anywhere, maybe that means I'm bad at feeling the feng shui, maybe it's something that doesn't bother me that much, who knows.

This week due to spring break, I did not go to seek lessons at an outside studio, I instead did a couple solo practices. I watched some Yoga with Adrienne videos, as I have done her yoga routines before and found them helpful. These practices are not given Eastern names or traditional routines, but I suspect them to be a diverse soup of different yoga routines blended into one. They have attractive sounding names such as "detox yoga", "yoga for runners", and "full body yoga" to give it appeal to viewers. Nevertheless, these yoga routines consist of some pretty basic yoga poses such as mountain, forward fold (which I am better at now!), child's pose, and I learned what an eagle pose was today. I feel great after having completed this, and I look forward to returning to the studio this week.

This past week of my yoga practice has consisted of several individual practices, and two practices with an instructor. I attended a beginners/all levels class at yoga nine with Laurie last Sunday. At this class, emphasis was placed on forward folds, seated postures, and stretches for the back, legs and core. From this class I learned the value of a proper forward fold, and how to keep a straight level back without looking like an unattractive hunch back. I learned some great pointers on keeping a straight back, such as arching the lower back forward and then going into a forward fold, then imagining a rope on the upper back pulling the chest up. The following day I did an individual practice to stretch out the soreness I experienced the next day. On Thursday in class, we did a Sivananda practice in class with Jenn. At the beginning of that practice we did breathing exercises where you would breathe out of one nostril, then out the other. I was relieved when we moved on to the physical practice as I was uncomfortable doing the breathing and was worried the entire session was going to be devoted to that. We did some exercises, and I managed to do an assisted headstand. Some of the questions posed to us this week address yoga as a transition from a counterculture to a popular culture practice. Yoga transitioned to a pop culture practice when it was marketed in the United States alongside exercise routines for women's health. Yogi's in the East became popular when they published books and were visited by Westerners who sought their teaching. Popular celebrities doing yoga such as Marilyn Monroe made yoga popular in the West. As a means to treat addiction, yoga is a powerful tool to help addicts towards recovery. With regular practitioners, addicts choose the spiritual path, or the more exercise oriented yoga routine. Those who are spiritual use yoga along the same lines as those who seek God and put their energy in faith to help them when they feel down, and aid in their recovery. Addicts experience a "lack" in their life as noted by a Huffington Post article. They feel that they need something to fill a void that is missing, and many turn to drugs and alcohol. Once an addict is detoxed, they can concentrate on breathing, meditation, and yoga. This is a cure proven to aid in addiction recovery.

This past week at yoga, I attended a class at the TRLC with Jason. We placed emphasis on back exercises, and also paid special attention to our neck and core when someone in the class volunteered that they had a back injury. We spent a great deal of time in the plank position, and switched around between that and lunges, holding a long, warrior pose for at least a minute if not more. The exercise was good in that it calmed me down from a day of stressful activities and confrontations. By the end of it, I felt that I got a good stretch in, and I felt the tension in my neck disappear. This is the sense of healing I felt that day from doing yoga. Despite the tension felt both in the physical and emotional sense, I felt all of those problems not disappear per say, but certainly carry less weight in my day. Psychological healing comes from stepping out of the mindset you use to examine your problems, and looking at them from a different perspective afterwards, making it easier to deal with. Physical healing comes when you are no longer sore in an area you were once sore in, or you are healed if you are less sore. Two great ways to get healed by doing yoga, and there are no pills required! Beats the doctors office.