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| Saulnierville, Nova Scotia |
Near the end of the general class today at David's new yoga studio, as I rested on the floor briefly before giving my full attention to the next pose, setubundha sarvanghasana, I heard one of the other students who was already in the pose ask a question. She said, "Is this supposed to be relaxing?" Perhaps it was because I found this class quite challenging at times, or perhaps it was because I was generally tired, but I instantly laughed right out loud and declared that this should be the mantra for all Iyengar yoga classes, "is this supposed to be relaxing?"
It struck me as so funny because many people think that doing yoga IS very relaxing. In one way they are right, but in most Iyengar yoga classes this relaxation is the hard won fruit of serious, physically demanding work. The harder you work the deeper your relaxation at the end of class. This "hard work" involves sweat, increased heart rate, trembling muscles if you push yourself too much, uncertainty, balance, confronting some of your own fears about what your body is capable of doing, and most of all strength. As David sometimes says, yoga has nothing to do with what is comfortable. You are rarely comfortable, rather you attempt to retrain your nervous system by moving in ways that feel unusual, and all of this increases your joints' range of motion and undoes "desk disease", that condition so many people experience from too many hours at a desk. If you are very tight in one part of your body, that part will be asked to open and stretch. If you are very weak in one part, that part will be asked to become strong.
That was a rather long winded explanation about why this remark, "is this supposed to be relaxing?", was so funny today. Do you get it? What others think is easy sometimes really isn't. I hope you had a good laugh today too :)
namaste.
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