By: Dawn Swinney
“I’m not good at yoga.” “I can’t sit around for an hour.” “I can’t quiet my mind.” “I can’t bend my body into a pretzel.” “Yoga isn’t active enough.”
Yep, I’ve heard all of these and more for reasons people haven’t taken a yoga class here at Double Edge. Also, I’ve said all of these things as well at one point in my life so I get it. Walking into a yoga class anywhere can be intimidating. However, think about the first time you walked into a Welded group class. Were you good at it? Were there unknowns? Did you know what to expect? Had you “heard” about what Welded was and already formed an opinion? Maybe that opinion was what delayed you even thinking about starting it!
I would venture to say that none of us were “good” at Welded before we began. Think about anything new that you experience…driving at 15 years old (none of us were good at that!), skiing or snowboarding, cooking a meal, relationships, ect. Why do we feel like we have to be good at something to start it? Where did that come from? A lot of things in life take practice. Mastery. Repetition. Discipline. Hard work! Yoga and any kind of mobilizing is the same way. Most of us are sore on a daily basis, depending on how many Welded classes you attend or how old you are or injuries you have or other things you enjoy doing in your free time. Yoga has many facets to it, but the yoga program here at Double Edge is focused on the physical practice of stretching for recovery and awareness of your breath and linking that to movement. Us teachers are most concerned with providing a space for an hour for you to come, relax, recover from your day/week, and leave feeling better than you did when you came in. That’s it! Pretty simple.
Next time you hear yourself say anything like the statements at the beginning I would challenge you to redirect your thinking from negative reasons why you can’t to what could happen if you did. You can apply this to things beyond yoga as well! You don’t have to be “good” before you try…at anything.