Where do I even start..? Well I flew into DC the day before hurricane Sandy was supposed to hit land. I was one of the last flights that actually made it to DC. When we landed, everyone on the plane started clapping, but I have to admit, I wasn't one of them that was clapping. I wasn't too thrilled to be in Sandy's path. I wanted to go to my Holy Yoga retreat, but not in the middle of a hurricane. I've never experienced a hurricane first hand, but I've seen enough footage of hurricanes on the weather channel to scare me away. Long story short, we were on the very bottom edge of the hurricane's path, so we really didn't experience anything besides a bad thunder storm. I didn't see any damage, but we did lose power for 3 days and 3 nights. It was dark, it was freezing cold, it was wet, and we couldn't shower. And then there was light! We got the power back for the last four days and all was good.
What did I learn?
1. Holy Yoga is all about grace. If you want to come to class and sit in child's pose the whole time, awesome! If you want to sing along to all the songs, go for it. It isn't about doing the poses exactly right, and breathing correctly. While the poses and the breathing are important, they aren't the most important thing. At it's core, yoga is about having a deeper relationship with your body. It is about recognizing the warning signals your body is sending you before they get serious. This means that if you are in a pose, and you are doing the pose correctly, including the breathing, but you are feeling pain, then you need to honor that pain. Get out of the pose and go into child's pose. GRACE. I have been in classes before where they say to go to child's pose if you feel uncomfortable, but then if you do go into child's pose, they make a huge deal out of it because you aren't pushing yourself. This has caused me to ignore the signals that my body is sending me. In Holy Yoga, we truly honor this by giving grace to all of our students.
2. Holy Yoga is a time to praise God. I'm not a singer. By that, I mean that I cannot sing. At all. Unfortunately for me, singing is the main way that the christian community praises God. So, I've never really FELT the power of praising God until doing Holy Yoga. If there is one thing I can promise you about Holy Yoga, it is that you will leave every class feeling uplifted.
3. I actually developed an appreciation for restorative classes. I am a girl that likes to sweat when I'm working out. I want my heart to be racing, and I want to feel exhausted when I'm done exercising. When I first started attending yoga classes, I was bored. I thought I was wasting my time because I wasn't sweating and I wasn't tired enough when it was over. Eventually I found power yoga, and I fell in love with the intensity of that. At retreat, we did some restorative yoga and it totally transformed my views. Yoga serves many purposes. One of them is stress relief. Restorative yoga is all about stress relief, and when it is taught properly, it brings a sense of calm that I have rarely experienced. Stress relief is huge for your health! I hope you will give restorative classes a try, instead of avoiding them like I always did.
If you want to hear more about all the gritty details of retreat, or if you have more questions about what Holy Yoga actually is, please reach out to me abby.shroka@gmail.com I would LOVE to share my experiences and attempt to answer your questions!
For information on where and when I'll be teaching my classes, visit my website. All the info is under the "yoga" tab.
I'm also on twitter @Abby_Shroka Let me know if you're on twitter too, so I can follow you.
Wishing you Health, Hope, & Happiness
Abby
Holy Yoga is actually great for someone who wants to strengthen their spiritual being. My first Holy Yoga retreat, or what we call "outreach" was when I was in middle school. That event was quite engaging for we get the chance to fully know ourselves as they teach us how to be more focused spiritually. There are also programs that changed my perception in life.
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