Yoga

[amanfang]

Anyone have first-hand experience with Yoga classes?  I hear all this stuff about Eastern philosophy and meditation, but I really know nothing about it.  I am really only interested in flexibility, strengthening, and the breathing exercises. 

[ada]

I have done Iyengar yoga for ages. IMO it's the best kind by far. It's very physical and you can do cool stuff like handstands and hanging upside down from ropes.

 I don't get into the meditation and spiritual stuff too much. I just like Iyengar because it makes you strong and flexible and keeps you lean.  It's also a great way to stretch out after being at the piano for too long.

A proper session takes about two hours though so it's fairly time intensive.

Make sure you get a proper instructor. Whatever you do DO NOT go to yoga classes at a gym. They have no *** idea and it is entirely the wrong atmosphere. You should have lots of ventilation and silence. No pumping music. No incense either.

Also don't try and teach yourself. A qualified instructor will make sure you're doing the right moves and knows how to adjust you if you're in the wrong position. If you don't get the postures right you're wasting your time.

[leucippus]

I used to be into that pretty heavy when I was in my 30's.  I actually lived a very "back-to-basics" lifestyle for about 5 years of my life spending much of my time living in the woods and working only part-time jobs mostly with horses outdoors.

In any case, there are two major aspects to Yoga.  One is the meditation aspect.  There are of course spiritual aspects to the meditation as well, but in general I found it to be very relaxing and it calmed my mind.  I meditated quite a bit and I actually reached the stage where I could see, and become immersed, in the "white light".   The only problem is that I am a very logical person and every time that would happen I would think to myself "Ah! It's the white light!" and just having that thought would snap me out of it.  So I was never able to achieve the full effect of it.  It was still a very useful experience.

In fact, during that time other people would appear to me as though they were on fast-forward.  It was actually quite humorous.  

I got away from it when I went back to college at 38.  I think it's pretty useless to try to meditate for a few minutes and then turn around and study hard, and keep up with the real world.  I think the mediation takes time to calm things and if you keep stirring them back up again between meditations you kind of lose the over-all effect.   It might still be better than no meditation at all though.

The second aspect of Yoga is the body stretching exercises.  Actually I think they are quite useful in and of themselves even if a person doesn't meditate at all.  

I think the whole thing combined (the calming of the mind, and the relaxing of the body) can come together to have a very profound effect.   Moreover, there are other aspects to both of these as well.  The meditation can help you focus, and the stretching exercises can help you become more nimble.  They are actually more than just stretching exercises, they help you to become more sensitive to balance and to become in better control of your body motions in general.   Many exercises in the martial arts are very similar to Yoga exercises with the idea being that you can focus all of your power to a single impact point.  (great for self-defense)   Imagining being able to put your entire body weight into the impact area of a single punch.  It can be quite devastating to someone on the receiving end.  

I actually studied karate at that same period in my life.  I did it all with books.  Self-learned (not self-taught).  The authors of the books were the teachers.

Anyway, you can't go wrong with it.  Whether you want it for total peace and relaxation, or whether you want it to help you become more mentally aleart, of whether you want it to help defend yourself in a dangerous world.  It can be useful for all these things and probably more.

Good Luck with it.  

[amanfang]

So if I'm not looking for the meditation stuff, should I do Pilates instead?  And what is the difference?

[timothy42b]

I'm not well versed in the Pilates stuff, though I've read a few of the books and played with the exercises.  I've done a lot more yoga, though not recently.

Both Yoga and Pilates are "in" from time to time, and then generate a lot of trashsport type variations.  Power yoga, Exerball Pilates, etc.  You want to stay away from those and stick to the basics.  The variations tend to dilute the benefits and be taught by unskilled (and sometimes unscrupulous) instructors. 

Yoga will give you more advanced results for flexibility.  Pilates will give you a little light toning, probably less than you'd get from a standard calisthenics program.  You can learn a lot of either on your own out of books and tapes, though as a beginner a little instruction can go a long way to get you started.  BKS Iyengar is the gold standard for yoga instruction, if you can find an affiliated instructor they will be reputable.  His book is very good (Light on Yoga) but can be hard for a novice to start with. 

[garetanne]

So if I'm not looking for the meditation stuff, should I do Pilates instead?  And what is the difference?

Pilates is yoga with movement.

Meditation and Asana (exercise) are two of the 7 limbs of yoga..... you can definately go to a beginner's yoga class if all you are interested in is breathing and flexibility, but I warn you, it will if you allow it, yoga will filter into other aspects of your life little by little.  Yoga keeps me sane and if time and money were no object I'd take ALOT more classes.

As someone else said, find a good yoga studio, DON'T take a class at a gym.  Its the difference between a good piano and a child's key board.

[timothy42b]

Pilates is yoga with movement.

I think it would be more precise to say Tai Chi is yoga with movement.  Pilates is like minimalist calisthenics.  The way it was explained to me is it is better to one repetition absolutely perfectly than a few dozen haphazardly, whether it is pushups or stretches.  For building strength of course that is physiologically unsound, but for other purposes it might work.  (You can build lots of strength doing 1 - rep maximums, but it is the intensity and not the form that matters.)