Luiza's Yoga Blog

This week's practice was Vipassana Meditation led by Marcello Spinella. I enjoyed how he taught us some science of the brain. I am a science major so it made meditation make more sense to me. Neuroscience is a hard topic to learn, but the way Marcello Spinella explained it made it easy to follow. When meditation is explained scientifically it makes so much sense and also made me want to do it even more. Yoga can be seen as a form of meditation in my practice space. This is because yoga is a way to focus on my thoughts and bring myself to a state of calmness and relaxation. I learned that meditation is not a way to clear your mind completely, but instead to calm your mind and try to bring your thoughts on what the instructor is talking about.  Meditation is practiced for many reasons, relaxation, to calm down, and much more. Meditation can be practiced at a yoga studio or even from your chair at school. First, you have to try to focus on your breathing and be conscious of your surro...

For this week’s yoga practice I chose to do another video led by Lesley Fightmaster. This week she taught a vinyasa flow yoga class. It was a good mixture of relaxing stretches and poses that were not easy. These types of practices are encouraging because it is nice to be able to do some poses well while you still feel as if you are pushing yourself with the poses that are harder to hold for longer periods of time.  I enjoy how Lesley has a nice soothing voice and is very good at explaining the poses. This makes it easy to not have to look back at the screen several times. This is especially nice when I am practicing in my room at school because there is not much space to practice so not having to have the computer very close to me is helpful.  Another aspect of this week’s practice that I enjoyed a lot was the motivational sayings the instructor would say throughout the practice. She nicely explained the poses, what their benefits are, and a little motivational saying. Even i...

  This week I practiced Hatha yoga led by Lesley Fightmaster. It was very soothing in the beginning with all of the stretching positions she had me do. As the practice went on it became more difficult as we had to hold our bodies up with one arm at a time. This was a nice challenge to try to improve my yoga capabilities, but it was definitely not the hardest yoga I have ever done. I would rate it a seven out of ten. The context of my pracice space was different than my usual place. It was at my house in northern Jersey instead of my school house that I rent. It was nice because it is more spacious, my dog was with me and it was much more quiet than my school house with 6 girls. The definition of a practice space is really anywhere where you can focus and practice yoga. It can be in nature, your home or a studio. Connections made outside of the context of the practice space are typically made socially. Since I have been practicing at home and not with a whole class or a live instruc...

This week’s yoga practice was led by Jenn Kretzer from The Yoga Hive. We practiced Shivananda yoga for over an hour which was very relaxing but also felt like a workout. Jen was very good at explaining how to do the poses and corrected us when needed. I did not realize it until we started the practice, but I have done Sivananda many times before. I just did not know it was called that. When I attended Rutgers University during my freshman year I joined a yoga club. The instructor always had us go through the same poses and we finished with three oms. It was nice knowing the yoga prior to the practice because I did not have to look back to my screen multiple times since I knew what I was doing.  After researching this yoga I found that it is one of the only yoga practices that has not been modified from its original form. I find this very fascinating because everyone always feels the need to change things up nowadays to keep people interested. There is also a special feeling of gett...

This week I did a vinyasa yoga class. The class was from a youtube channel called Floating Yoga School. It was about an hour long and there were many students in the class to look at for example. This class was very enjoyable because there were a lot of poses I have already learned. I also enjoyed how there were headstands involved because I attempted it and I was actually able to hold it for a little bit of time. The practice was challenging because it was so long and we had to hold the poses for a good amount of time, but it was also very enjoyable. Yoga was very traditional at first when it started in the east. It was a part of life that enlightened and raised you to a higher level. As it came to the west it became a counter-culture practice because it started breaking traditional yoga. After more time passed it became pop culture. Yoga is now more of a trend middle-class women attend. It is not used so much for enlightenment, but for a good body and to fit in.   Yoga in th...

Andrew Eppler taught this week’s yoga class. It was called ashtanga yoga which was definitely the hardest yoga I have done so far. The movements were very rapid from pose to pose. Also, the poses at the end of the class were very difficult like balancing on your two hands. I found myself having to take breaks and modifying the poses a lot in order for me to be capable of doing the practice. Yoga is seen as a healing practice because it is meant to enlighten people. In order to heal one must come to an agreement that they want to be healed. After this is done it is like being enlightened so that is how they are connected. This is shown to me by the teachers always helping me improve by correcting me. Correction is a normal part of any yoga class because if it was not then people could get hurt. Also, they would not be getting the full experience if they were not doing the poses correctly. After yoga, I feel happy I did it because I know it is good for me mentally and physically. I enjoy...

This week I practiced Iyengar yoga in class. The instructor’s name was Amita Baghat and it lasted for over an hour. This was a nice practice because it was not too challenging, but we did do some fun poses. I enjoyed how the instructor taught us as she led the yoga practice. She would pause to teach about Iyengar yoga and to show us how to get into poses. It was only difficult for her to show us the full pose because the camera could not capture either the top or bottom of her body, but she did move most of the time for us to see her full body from different angles.  Practice spaces do build a sense of community within all of the yogis in the class. Even though online yoga classes I still feel connected because we are all doing the same thing together. Always when someone asks a question or says they are having trouble doing a certain pose I can relate. Having a relationship with your class is important even if it is just knowing everyone is supportive. It is much harder to have a ...