Life Yoga ~ Week 5

This week marks my 5th week of classes with Hillary, owner of Life Yoga. I am excited because I have anxiously been awaiting the time when I could begin taking classes twice per week! Hillary recently gained access to a private studio, so she will now be teaching Saturday classes at 9am in addition to her on location private classes. I am so thrilled for Hillary and also excited to begin class twice a week!

I have noticed that Yoga is following me around outside of classes. For the first time in my life, I am taking notice of my posture. We all know that our moms and grandmothers have always preached the importance of a good posture, but I never have thought much of it before now. Even when I am deep in the trenches of an editing spree, I can feel myself sitting with a straight and strong spine, where before I would have just been hunched over, with my head often resting supported by my hand - not the right thing to do.

I also have noticed that I find myself walking differently too. I can feel myself naturally walking taller and with my shoulders back and strong, where before, I never really thought much about how I walked.

Hillary and I were talking after class last week and she enlightened me about her first feelings about Yoga when she first began taking classes herself. She said that one day after one of her first classes, she discovered that Yoga "tricks you." It tricks you because during class you can be in the depths of a new pose and think you are dying, or want to die, but then after class you feel so great! It's funny how during Yoga I think to myself a hundred times that Hillary is intentionally holding poses too long and is intentionally making me suffer (and I mean that in the best way), but after class I feel so amazingly energized and happy that I made it through another class.

One last thing that I will share for this posting is that I researched how many calories you burn during a class with Hillary. Depending on how far you take the poses and what you put into your class, you can be burning between 350-500 calories per session! I told my husband that if I took classes daily, it would allow me to add a full extra meal to my day! He told me that the typical woman would be happy to know that those calories were helping her to lose weight - I am the only woman who would be happy to know that it would allow me to eat more! I disagree! I know that most women have dreams of eating chocolate to our heart's content (dark chocolate for me!) and not gaining weight! Just think - if you do Yoga daily, that would allow you to eat a candy bar daily and still lose weight. That's what I call a win/win situation!

~Sarah