Who is afraid of yoga? Me. I am not afraid of airplanes, traveling alone, elevators, nor tunnels. I am afraid of MRI, escalators, and yoga.
I am not a yoga practitioner. I didn’t have my first yoga class until five months after I retired. That was two years ago. The teacher insisted on physically putting me in positions that did not make me feel comfortable. Think pretzels. I was more like a tree limb that refused to bend. After the second class, I walked out and never went back.
The thought of doing yoga never entered my mind again until last week. The pain in my arms doesn’t let me lift as high as I could before. I researched how to improve my range of motion. Yoga was the answer given 99% of the time. I couldn’t put it off anymore. I had to get rid of my fear of yoga. I watched yoga videos to understand the vocabulary. I tried the yoga poses on my own, but I needed to be with an instructor to know that I was doing the right thing.
I signed up for the yoga class at the local community center. The day before fear set in. What do I wear? Do I need yoga socks? What do I need to take to the class? I knew that I needed a mat and a bottle of water. What kind of mat do I need? I went to Amazon but didn’t see what I needed. I went to Target and found yoga mats. I found purple and pink. Does this mean that only women do yoga? Next to the mats, I found a “beginning yoga kit”…
