Iyengar yoga practice: My experience with Iyengar was definitely surprising. I am used to vinyasa yoga, where the class has a certain amount of flows and series of positions throughout parts of the class. Iyengar is more about doing lots of the same type of poses for a given series and holding them for extended periods of time. I had never been made to hold a certain pose for 30 seconds, nor was I ever given a wall to aid my practice. Iyengar is also very focused on alignment, and our instructor was constantly re positioning and adjusting us so that our pose was perfect. I also was surprised by the difficulty of the poses that the instructor expected us to do. I had experience with crow, sideways crow, and headstand poses, but many people in class did not and we were all expected to do the poses. This struck me as odd and slightly dangerous, but I was impressed with myself for still sort of being able to do some of the difficult poses after not practicing them for a while. The class left me sore all over, although I did not sweat or feel like I was getting an intense workout from it. Perhaps it is just from holding these types of advanced positions for periods of time.
Prompt: Practice as Ritual-Based on the article by Nevrin, How might your practice be analyzed as a "ritual"? How does this ritual function to change the nature, impact or intensity of your practice experience? Response: Yoga practice is a ritual in its environment, the behavior of those who practice it, and the sequence practitioners of yoga go through in the duration of the class that both challenge our social norms and then reinforce them. The setting of a yoga studio is set up as a ritualistic space. There is usually an altar of sorts with crystals, incense, and hindu statues (usually Shiva or Ganesh) at the front of the studio. Everyone removes their shoes before entering the space, something typically not done outside the home. No one speaks, and all students move through a sequence of poses and postures in a particular order. In real life, it would be against the norm for a stranger to touch your body, and yet students not only allow but welcome the adjustments of th...
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