Namaste

I would describe myself as somewhat of a “fitness junkie.”  I love fitness; I love running, walking, lifting weights, riding my spin bike, etc.  When I thought about what I should do for my learning project, I wanted to do something that I already had some interest in.  So, fitness came to my mind.  I then started thinking of different types of workouts that I have never done, and yoga came to mind.  Now, I have thought about doing yoga many times before, but if I’m being honest, I like to push myself when I work out, and I have always thought of yoga as more stretching, rather than working out (I am thinking I will probably have different views on this by the time my learning project is complete).  With my university classes in full swing, I think that slowing down and doing yoga will be good for my body…and soul.

I first came up with a plan for my learning project.  I wanted to first familiarize myself with some basic yoga moves; so basically just doing research on the internet, before actually following along with a video in the coming weeks.  So with the start of my plan in place, I decided to get started, and by doing so I went to trusty old google, and typed in “basic yoga poses.”  I found a google image that showed some (what seem to be) basic, and rather easy-looking yoga poses.  Here is the image that I found:

I want to familiarize myself with the names of the poses and what they are so that I can follow along more easily when I eventually do a yoga workout on YouTube etc.  As you can see, there are 20 poses on the image, and out of the 20, I was really only fully familiar with 3 of them.  This made me realize that I have picked a good subject for my learning project because I will indeed be learning!

After looking at different poses, I decided to try a couple.  I tried doing the plank pose, which is actually a pose that I always finish my workouts with; I just never realized that a plank can be a yoga pose as well.  I also did the child’s pose, which felt really good because it helped to stretch my muscles after going for a run this morning.  Here is a couple of snapshots of me doing the plank and child’s pose:

Once I do some more research on the different types of yoga poses, I then would like to follow along with yoga videos.  I want to start off by following beginner videos and then eventually leading to advanced videos.  My end goal is to be able to hold myself up in a headstand, be able to do an extremely advanced yoga pose, (I’ll get back to you on which pose that will be, I need to do more research!), and maybe even create a video of me constructing a yoga workout video.

I am excited to continue to educate myself about yoga throughout the weeks to come, and I am also excited to see how it makes me feel.  I am hoping that slowing down and not doing such physically demanding workouts will be good for me, and I am excited to see the strength that I hopefully gain throughout this process.  Again, I hope by the end of this project I can successfully hold a headstand, do an advanced yoga pose, and maybe even conduct my own yoga workout video for you all to show off what I have all learned…Yoga by Jasmine?  We will see!