Zen.

Class: Yoga

Date: September 28th, 2010

Time & Location: 7pm at Lakeside Lodge

I've gone three additional times between my last blog post and this one, but those are undocumented and weren't written about. So, we'll continue on from here. I arrived to Lakeside around 7pm, with my baby blue yoga mat and my friend Dave trodding along beside me. It's the same basic set up and atmosphere every week. The room is dimly lit as soft calming music plays in the background. The temperature is normally comfortable and easy to exercise in. The one thing that has changed is the amount of men that are participating. Over the past couple weeks, I've noticed more and more guys showing up to practice.

We started off with basic breathing techniques while sitting Indian style. We spent a lot of time in children's pose. We also repeatedly did an exercise where the tips of our fingers were stretched out in front of us, and we had to lift our backside's up. After a couple sets, I felt the blood rushing to my head and I began to feel very dizzy. I'm pretty used to these routines by now. The instructor follows the same basic routine each week, adding a few additional things here and there. I found everything a bit more challenging this week because I've been kinda out of shape and not going to ultimate frisbee practice.

The teacher doesn't speak very loudly during practice. She'll just give instructions such as, "Walk your feet back towards your head and hold it." There have been a few times where I heard her mutter something about asana positions. She doesn't encourage any sort of chanting or sounds.

Next week I'm going to try and go to a session off campus. There's a lot of disturbances with the yoga class on campus. First off, it's right next to the kitchen of Papa John's. During the last session, the workers were blasting music the whole time and we could barely hear her. Another distraction is all the kids that are waiting in line to get food at Papa John's. They "accidentally" press the handicap button that opens up the doors to the room we practice in. It's really distracting and causes everyone to lose their train of thought. I really hope to get more out of these classes throughout the semester.