The Secret Stress Behind Yoga

October 11, 2008     Posted in Body

yoga1.JPGI’ve been attending a yoga class at the gym. I joined it so I could learn to get in touch with myself and relax and destress after a long day. I’m not really sure when I got out of touch with myself, but it sounds very zen and enlightened to say things like, “I just want to back in touch with myself.” And when people ask me if I like it, I just nod and tell them it’s nice to get back in touch with myself.


By Jenni

They look at me with jealousy because everyone would like to be in touch with themselves.

I’ve learned a lot since getting in touch with myself. Like I’ve learned that I lack flexibility. So instead of becoming destressed and relaxed I’ve become very stressed and unrelaxed. If I had never signed up for Yoga, I never would have learned that I’m incapable of doing a simple Downward Dog, nor would I know that my body refuses to do an appropriate Serpent.

I can’t even think about the failure that was Praying Possum.

My yoga teacher often comes up behind me, presses on various parts of my body, and says things like, “tell your calf muscle it’s safe and it’s ok to relax,” as if talking to my calf muscle will suddenly let me place it behind my ear. I mean, I definitely tried while the whole class looked on waiting to see how well I could communicate safety to my calf muscle. I haven’t been that embarrassed in front of a class since I confused organism with orgasm in 6th grade.

The only reason I go to the class is for the last five minutes. For the first 55 minutes we do positions that I think are made up as we go along. The teacher simply puts an adverb in front of an animal and, before you know it, I’m doing the Sleepy Bovine and Sad Chicken positions. But for the last five minutes she instructs us to lay back on the mat and let go of all our tensions, our stresses, and our heartaches.

I’m a college student taking a yoga class midday, so you can only imagine the kinds of tensions, stresses, and heartaches that I have.

But the lights are off and there’s some kind of Enya Remix playing in the background and it’s the only class where I’m encouraged to fall asleep. And the best part is that it’s not called falling asleep. It’s called getting in touch with yourself.

11 Comments on "The Secret Stress Behind Yoga"

  1. Sophie says:
    Sat, 11th Oct 20088:14 am 

    haha! This was a awesome read! And I am so happy someone pointed out that yoga isnt the wonder workout for everybody. : )

  2. Rachel says:
    Sat, 11th Oct 20088:28 am 

    Yoga is an on-going process. The more you do it the more flexible you will be. The first class I took was hell. It gets better! Don't stress because flexibility issues are normal. Stress because you are a stress-a-holic. That is the prob girl.

  3. Nat says:
    Sat, 11th Oct 20089:21 am 

    Haha, excellent article!

    I also get very stressed out with Yoga. I practice bikram hot yoga and a lot of the time I get stressed out because I can't balance as well as the people who've just started and I've been going for months.. And it used to really affect me. Yoga was making me more angry than making me relaxed. But I kept with it. I let go of the stress. I don't know how to explain it, but I stopped worrying about how well I was going through the practice. If I fell out of the posture I got back into it, as many times as I need to.

    And now, it doesn't stress me out as much. I still have a love-hate relationship, but it's gotten a lot better. I'm more focused. I'm more.. in touch with myself.

    ;)

  4. Jacks says:
    Sat, 11th Oct 200811:38 am 

    I have the exact opposite experience with yoga. Whenever I am stressed, I head to my nearby bikram studio. No matter how hard the class is for me that day, or how well or well I don't do, something about the breathing and the stretching and the corpse pose REALLY relaxes me. When I walk out of the studio I feel extremely positive. All my stresses have been wiped away, and my mind feels completely blank. It's actually difficult to summon thoughts sometimes and in today's world, that is a WONDERFUL feeling!!

    If I had the money to practice everday I would be an entirely different person, because I really think I would become more "zen", and just more at peace with everything going on in my life.

  5. Christina says:
    Sun, 12th Oct 20087:03 pm 

    Try going into your yoga class with a different mindset. Your teacher probably hasn't mentioned this to you or the class, but a big part of yoga is being nonjudgmental. Try to be mindful of any judgments or comparisons that enter your mind throughout your practice and try letting them go (it's hard!) The more you can do this (so what if you can't do a perfect downdog?) the more you will learn to enjoy yoga instead of stress about it. :)

  6. Bunny says:
    Mon, 13th Oct 20083:06 am 

    just a funny little remark to the organism/orgasm thing – I'm 110% sure that would have happened to me as a kid, had my Sensei at a week long Karate training thing not told us the story of how the ice melted down the mountain and all the little orgasms crawled down too.

    Honestly. I dunno if he was joking or what but the adults quickly corrected him and as you can imagine the older kids took great delight in trying to get the younger kids to ask what an orgasm was!!

  7. Regina says:
    Tue, 14th Oct 20086:00 pm 

    So now it's about time you actually registered for that class, isn't it?

  8. Suchi says:
    Sun, 25th Jan 20091:21 pm 

    Yoga is your way to harmony. Yoga and spirituality go hand in hand. Hath yoga is a great exercise for both mind and spirit. Spiritual medicine is fantastic for the soul and mind as well as for the body. People should pay more attention to this great tool of healing. If we have many rewards in life which can be many ferris wanli dimensional to transients to our biology and in more agreement of our attention to find the truth behind the metaphysical reformation of life. This is because our attention always go towards the traditional medicine that may or may not cure the real problem.

  9. Niyati says:
    Mon, 21st Sep 20093:06 am 

    I read your whole article and I loved your article. Yoga today is very important in people’s life. Yoga is gaining more and more importance as there is a lot of stress at workplaces. Yoga is the best and easy way to reduce the stress. And I have some good yoga tips at http://www.jiyohealthy.com/category/stress/

  10. Michael says:
    Thu, 8th Oct 200911:33 pm 

    i practice Yoga purely for the purpose of reducing stress and it really works. Yoga keeps both of my mind and body relax.

  11. Bhagita says:
    Mon, 17th Jan 20115:45 am 

    That pic looks familiar, who's in it or where is it from?

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