Jumping Right In!

Since Last Time….

Since my last post, I sort of came up with a more specific mental plan of how I would break down this learning. I was originally thinking that I would:

1. Start by reserching more yoga to see what I wanted to start with
2. Then, I was going to look for beginner yoga online sources, such as youtube videos or apps, to start my learning (mainly because jumping right into a in person class seems a little too nerve-wracking)
3. Next, I was going to start looking for online sources that were for specific types of yoga and begin working through those
4. By this point I figured I would have a little taste of everything and can finally brave going to a real yoga class! (most likely a UR Fit class because they are free)
5. After grasping what yoga is actually all about and experiencing different types I was going to really start digging into yoga in the classroom resources and begin trying some of those out while drawing from my above experiences

This plan sounded pretty solid to me! BUT everything got thrown off course when I was waiting for the elevator and saw an event that residence life was putting on called “Indigenous Minded Yoga”

Change of Plans

Turns out I was jumping right into an actual yoga class! Thankfully, the Indigenous Minded Yoga class was held over zoom so it was much less intimidating and I still got to be in the comfort of my own dorm!

The class was taught by Michelle Beatty who is a member of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation and she is from and resides in Deschambault Lake, Saskatchewan on treaty six territory. Michelle received her certification in a 200hour Yoga teacher training from the Saskatchewan Indigenous Yoga teacher association. Michelle is a third-year Kinesiology student at the University of Regina and a fourth-year Indigenous Health studies student at the First Nation University of Canada.

It was a pretty sweet yoga class because I was actually the only one who registered for the event to actually show up! So, it ended up being a 1 on 1 Indigenous Minded Yoga lesson! I had never actually heard of Indigenous Minded Yoga before I saw the poster hanging up so I have a feeling maybe some of you are wondering what it actually is. Well, it is a combination of vinyasa yoga combined with Indigenous ways of living, knowledge and practices! Michelle said that she actually sees yoga as a ceremony.

During the class, I learned that yoga is more than just a fitness fad. It is actually an eastern philosophy born in east India. Yoga is actually something many people embody every day by following The Yogi Code which is not something I had previously realized. Michelle explained how there are many similarities between this worldview and the Indigenous worldview where they instead follow the red road or the sacred path to live a good life. She also explained how yoga is something we are all born doing, we are on the ground moving around and many of us never come back to it. But when we do it can lead to self-actualization because it leads to better mental health, emotional health, spiritual health, specifically but it is all around about holistic healing.

Michelle opened the practice with a prayer, sweetgrass smudge, and some breathwork exercises. Then, we moved into some yoga sequences which were tied to symbolic animals. Here are some pictures of the poses that I may or may not be doing correctly! But hey, you gotta start somewhere! (I apologize if the qaulity isn’t the best, I screenshot them from a video).

Overall, I actually really enjoyed this yoga class and the 30 minutes flew by super fast because I was constantly trying to figure out the new poses (the only one I knew of before hand was the tree pose), how to properly move to the next pose, and time my breathing with the movements. I thought I was going to feel really tired after because yoga is relaxing (apperently in my head relaxing = tired) but I actually felt really almost revived/refreshed after the class so I was plesently surprised!

I am not 100% sure what I will do next week considering I jumped right into the middle of my plan but stay tuned to find out!