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I love yoga…well, I love some yoga, anyway. I first began my yoga practice with the Iyengar style, which is a physical form that emphasizes alignment and breath work. I then moved on to Vinyasa yoga, in which poses flow from one to the next, generating heat throughout the body. Now I’m obsessed with Bikram yoga, where the room is heated to 105 degrees and the class follows a prescribed, specific series of postures. My home yoga practice is a blend of whatever my mood dictates, usually something that leaves me sweaty and with sore muscles.

I Want to Work It

The few times I’ve convinced myself to go to gentle yoga classes, I’ve started plotting my escape five minutes after arriving. The first time I was in a class where “om” was chanted, I almost snorted laughter through my nose. (I’ve since amended my ways and adopted the “om” mantra, though–it’s really beautiful when you think about it.)

While rehabilitating from an injury last year, I took a restorative class and was nearly frustrated to tears. What can I say? Relaxing is hard for me. From a professional standpoint, I know that I need to work on whatever is hardest for me. But from my own perspective, I want to do what feels good and natural to my body. I don’t want to push meditation and relaxation and stillness. And honestly, I can find that stillness much easier if I’m working through a difficult pose.

After a 90-minute Bikram class, I can lay in corpse pose for 10 minutes without complaint from my busy mind and restless body. In a gentle class where the instructor spouts beautiful verses about tranquility and quieting the mind, I’m fidgeting after two seconds.

The Flip Side

But I also have private yoga clients who dictate their own practices. My favorite client by far is my mom, who will put up with a bit of the flowing postures but really loves the restorative and healing aspects of yoga that I shy away from. She can sit in pigeon pose for three minutes, especially if I’m guiding her through the muscular relaxation cues. She loves child’s pose and reaps the benefits of her postures by holding them, breathing through them, and easing into her flexibility. Her practice is so completely different from mine that it would be hard to say they’re anything alike–and yet they are both yoga.

And yoga is really about uniting the physical body with the spiritual body and about finding strength in releasing. It’s about honoring what our bodies need at this moment and taking care of ourselves–about pushing ourselves to the limit and growing stronger, one breath at a time.

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