I must admit that when I first signed up for my first yoga class, I had a belief that yoga was easy. This wasn’t a thought that was meant to demean the activity, it was an uninformed view that something that looked so elegant and peaceful likely falls in line with elegant and peaceful.

This wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t the full picture. To my credit, when I signed up for my first session, I’d selected a “basic” class; follow up classes were schedule at the same time, and included gentle and basic.

I don’t really remember the poses that I worked on during my first session. What I do remember is that I looked at others a lot, and found that my general predisposition to little perspiration was in fact limited to other activities that I’d enjoyed for many years. (Running, Biking, Weight Training)

The session began easily enough. There were some warm-up stretches, breathing exercises, and a very gentle flow. (I’ll talk about flow in another post.) As the session progressed, so did the intensity and pace. Movements were quicker, more complex poses were introduced, and there were shorter pauses between the poses.

What I hadn’t anticipated at all was a new language. Well, new to me. This is what led to my constant looking around–I didn’t know what the phrases (or words) meant, so I had to look at the instructor or other yogis (yes, those who practice yoga are called yogis) to apply them to actual physical movements. Little did I know at the time, this would become a problem for me as I progressed.

There is something very important for anyone practicing yoga to remember: yoga’s core begins with the thought that one owns her/his practice. It took me quite a few sessions to embrace this. Although I was not a competitive individual when I was young, somewhere in my life I weighed my own success against those around me. Fortunately for me, I didn’t apply this to most things in my life. However, I did apply it to physical activities. When biking, I either had to catch up, or overtake. The same held true for running.

The downside this had during my first several yoga sessions was that I was driving myself to be like the others in the room. I subconsciously needed to be as graceful, move as quickly, and look the same as everyone else in the room. This is not good. What I found was that, despite my best attempts, my body just wasn’t ready to be like most others in the room–and that was okay. Despite every yoga instructor reminding us at the beginning of a session that we should move at our own pace, and do what we were comfortable doing, it seemed to go in one ear and out the other with me.

This had consequences, of course. Physically, my body wasn’t very happy with me. Mentally, I began to question whether or not yoga was right for me. I couldn’t keep my legs as straight as others during a forward fold. I perspired much more than anyone else in the studio. Instead of looking graceful during simple poses, I looked like was going to crumble. (And I often did.) And, keeping up was just taking every last ounce of strength and energy I had–with varied success.

I persevered and stuck with my practice. As will be apparent in my posts, yoga began a journey, versus a goal. For me, this was a very important distinction. A goal is what one strives to achieve. In fact, by attending my first yoga session–and continuing–I met my goal, and continue to meet my goal. A journey, by contrast, is road traveled; it has twists and turns, ups and downs, but ultimately one is exactly where s/he needs to be at any given time.