How I achieved a daily yoga practice and how it has changed my life

Originally published on Medium <link rel="canonical" href="https://medium.com/How I achieved a daily yoga practice and how it has changed my life | by Debbie W | Medium>

Something attracted me, over 40 years ago, to yoga. Back in the late 70’s, it felt new and different. I saw a class advertised at my local school in the adult education prospectus. I had no idea what that first step was to bring to my life.

In the 70’s and 80’s schools were open in the evenings to supply a huge range of subjects to local people. The cost was minimal, and they were very accessible. I gave lots of classes a try, but it was yoga that stuck. When I look back now, it feels strange how it managed to engage me.

There were no Lululemon leggins, or sticky yoga mats. There was a cold (in winter) gym and a towel or a sleeping bag to practice on. At the end of class, in the relaxation bit, I wrapped myself up in my old sleeping bag on the hard floor.

What on earth was it that kept bringing me back? I can’t remember how long I went to these classes maybe a year or so. Then I started a family, I found a book for yoga in pregnancy and followed its advise really very closely. I don’t think there were any pregnancy yoga classes about. I do believe that the movements helped my with my three pregnancies. I started gentle poses hours after giving birth.

However, now I look back on it, I was only doing a very small bit of what yoga is all about. I was only doing the poses. I think I ignored the instructions on breathing and I certainly had no idea about the importance of relaxation at the end. In this way I continued to practice ad hoc. I bought a book, Yoga — 28 day exercise plan by Richard Hittleman when I was 30 and tried and tried to get 28 days consecutively.

I tried and failed all the way through the years the children were growing up. When I was also trying to make a living and keeping a house, develop a career. I felt that I had to do 28 days consecutively or I was a failure. But I kept returning to the books and also the writings of Richard Hittleman.

Richard Hittleman somehow explains the philosophy behind yoga in a way that captured a 1970’s housewife (my view). It introduced the ideas of looking after yourself, eating well, good sleep, being in nature etc. It also introduced the ideas of being of service, to the family, to the community. Ideas of being gentle, both with myself and others.

These ideas helped me with lots of different aspects of my life. When I look back, I had some pretty difficult times with work, redundancy, bullying, managing people. Now I realise that my patience, trying to get a good job done, being loyal and resilient were supported and helped by my (then) adhoc, ‘poses only’ yoga practice.

As I approached retirement I made a great decision. To learn about yoga more. I didn’t do a yoga teacher training course to become a teacher, I did it because I wanted to know and understand yoga. When I started I was so nervous. I thought ‘why on earth I have I done this to myself?’ Everyone is going to be able to do these amazing poses and I can’t do much at all.

Those ideas soon vanished when I met everyone, I wasn’t on my own. The first thing I learned was that everyone’s body is different and we can’t achieve all the poses. Most of social media is full of hypermobile people, they make up a small percentage of the population, and they can do the poses naturally. They did not need to do loads of practice to get there.

Then we learnt about the importance of breathing in the poses. I so struggled with this. I remember trying to practice this whilst on holiday on a balcony, a sunny, beautiful place. I wrote in my diary — ‘this isn’t for me’. But I persevered. I also learnt that there are variations for poses to support different body types. This was new because in my book there was THE POSE and that was it. If I couldn’t do it I had failed.

Over the years leading up to my teacher training I had, bit by bit, drawn those failing 28 day sessions from Richard Hittlemans book together. I wasn’t practicing everyday but I was able to most days. This was a gift I hadn’t realised that I had given myself. I might only do one or two poses when I did practice, but I wasn’t focusing on the breathing and I never relaxed afterwards. My teacher training brought these highly important aspects into my day.

Now my daily practice has several poses, a warm up to start, I take a moment and see what’s going on in my body. Do I have a headache? Do I have any areas that don’t feel quite right? Very often I am now doing pared down poses, taking it slow, deepening my inhale, lengthening my exhale. Sometimes I practice for just a few minutes, sometimes a lot longer.

Now I take time to relax for a while at the end. To help me along I always listen to music. I have some lovely chilled music that helps me keep my movements slow and of course, some tunes for relaxation. It is a time in the day where I can set myself up for what is ahead of me.

I now realise that although I was scratching the surface for many years in my yoga practice it still had an immense impact on me. I was able to get through really difficult and challenging times and was able to cope, and to thrive. Now I understand, after loads more study, how the slow, breath infused movements actually change the whole body, the brain and the body itself. We are only just beginning to understand, through modern science, just what the original yogi’s, 3,000 plus years ago, had up their sleeves.