Balance Focus Flexibility
Or... Some of why I practice yoga
Climbing is a great release. It gives me somewhere I can go where the only thing I can focus on is the wall in front of me. Its a great excercise: strength, flexibility, cardio, mental stability. It's fun to do. It's a challenge. It's social. It's different each time I go. I think all the reasons I like climbing, is why I like yoga.
Its not suprising to me that so many climbers also practice yoga. Its another avenue to improve all the skills you need to become a good climber: strength, flexibility, mental focus. It's fun to do. It's exciting to see myself improve. It's a different series of poses each time I go to class. I really enjoy it.
All that being said, I think one of the reasons I like yoga so much is that it gives me a totally different mental break than I get from climbing. When I'm climbing, I have to focus on the route in front of me: my next move, my next hold, my next clip. I love going climbing after a stressful day at work when I can't shut my brain off at the end of the day. It gives me a great way to get all engineering problems out of my head (because when I'm climbing, if I'm thinking about something else, I'll fall). Yoga gives my brain the complete opposite kind of rest, and sometimes I need that too. Yoga has taught me (and is still teaching me) how to clear my mind, how to focus my breath, my energy, myself. How to take all the things that have been piling up on me, and let myself step away from them. Not because I need to focus on one thing (like in climbing) but because its ok to focus on nothing.
I'm really happy with my mix of yoga and climbing. I try to climb twice a week, and also try to practice yoga twice a week: Yin and Power Vinyasa. The Yin class is perfectly timed. It's typically the day after my hard climbing workout, and it gives me a gerat way to stretch out and relax. Power Vinyasa is an exhilerating way to start off my weekend. The intensity of the class varies from week to week, but it always seems to match the mood of the class. Rochelle is my instructor at and the owner of The Studio for Yoga And More in Moorestown, NJ. I'm really lucky that I found such a great yoga studio and with an instructor who's flow really matches my own. I really love Rochelle's style. She's very aware of her student's needs. Knows when to push us, knows when to go easy on us, and knows when she can have fun with us.
I'm so glad I started yoga. I look forward to continuing it for a very long time.