Fin.

I can’t believe the semester is over already. I feel like I have come such a long way since I stepped into B126 back in September. I underestimated the power and difficulty of yoga. I thought that it was a very feminine and soft practice. When Laurie first started going through the history of it all, I remember thinking, “Oh geez, there’s no way I’m going to understand any of this.” The names of famous yogi’s were so foreign and strange to me, along with a lot of other terms. After learning more, I realized that even though there was a lot of material, it wasn’t impossible to understand. I can honestly say that leaving this class I know a lot more historical yoga figures than I did when I first came in.

At the beginning of the actual practices, I didn’t find them too challenging. It was basic stretching and balancing. It wasn’t until the second and third week I discovered the more challenging postures. This is about the time that I started feeling the physical benefits of the practice, but not the mental or spiritual. The more frequently I practiced, the better I felt. It wasn’t until one class during savasana when I realized how relaxing and calming it all was. The slowly started getting more of the other benefits as time progressed. Now it has come to the point that when I’m really stressed out or under a lot of pressure, I long for some time to do yoga.

Today we watched the film on Ram Dass. I found it particularly interesting because I’m a psychology major and I’ve heard of a lot of the experiments that were discussed in the film. The practice of yoga and the experimentation with psychedelics have a couple things in common: a heightened sense of spirituality and self-realization. The use of acid and other hallucinogens gives the user a disassociative feeling. They look at themselves in ways they never have before, from a different perspective. Yoga can do the same thing to people who are dedicated to it.