It's strange - I always considered those yoga ditzes to be ridiculous (you know, those girls who walk around with a yoga bag hanging on their shoulder at like 2 pm on a workday, drinking a massively yuppie-style coffee drink)...
And now, I've found that, thanks to a dear friend and coworker, I've pretty much become one of them.
The meditative aspect of yoga has always interested me - but at the same time I found the idea of yoga as a workout method to be pretty high on the silly scale.
I think I still find it to be silly, but I also find that it's fun, so I guess that works. I've mainly focused on two forms - Bikram and Restorative.
Restorative is more along the lines of how I'd thought yoga should be - it's meditative, involved with holding poses for ten minutes or more, and really focused on the proper and deep flow of breath.
Bikram was the one that was a huge surprise (to do, and to find out that I enjoy!). Bikram is done in a heated room (on the order of 115 degrees) and you flow through a sequence of 26 postures (half standing, half seated) and do sets of each. It's very similar to the circuits the boys did in rowing - but with a slight twist to them. And I unfortunately mean that literally.
There are certain things in yoga which I'm really glad I can't do - some things require a certain elasticity in the tendons which... well, if I have a loose ACL, it's sure not going to be able to withstand any of the Gs it needs to bear in a GS turn.
Which brings me to something else I've learned. After a bikram session (other than just being so sweaty that I pretty much have to peel my kit off) I feel very similar to after a few good runs down a hill. In both cases, I'm taking my body and pushing it as much as I can - and in both cases, when I get it right, it just becomes... I want to say effortless, but it's not even that. When everything just clicks, and you're in the zone, it's still hard, and you can still feel your muscles aching, but it's also like suddenly it's natural.
And it's good that I can get a similar (lesser but similar :)) feeling at a studio about fifteen minutes from my house, instead of a 4hrs away.
So, I have come to accept it - I am a yoga ditz. And I'm okay with that.
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