Final Journal Entry: My Yoga Experience

             My experience throughout this semester of yoga teachings has altered my perspective on how yoga is viewed in different parts of the world. I am been exposed to a plethora of yoga definitions, practices, beliefs, and goals. Comparing and contrasting these concepts has led me to formulating my definition of yoga based on how I practice and what my goals are in regards to my yoga practice. Yoga is a multipurpose tool that can be used in a myriad of ways dependent upon the goals of the individual yogi and how they view their practice.
             My goals in yoga practice are primarily physical, with a focus on increasing my muscle stability and flexibility. Along with the physical benefits that I seek, I also use yoga to relax and  clear my mind as well as to practice breath control, a concept important not only in yoga but in my martial arts training as well. I use yoga as a supplement to my training because I see the physical benefits that it offers and the improvements that it has garnered me in my martial arts training. Since I began practicing yoga on a more consistent basis I have seen improvements in my hip flexibility as well as my core stabilizers.
             I also incorporate yoga into my daily life now that I have seen the therapeutic benefits of yoga for the lower back and hips, two areas that I have struggled with injuries with in the past. I also practice yoga in order to provide relief for my hips and lower back, which are used continuously in both striking arts such as boxing and muay thai and in grappling arts such as wrestling and jiu jitsu. Throughout a more consistent yoga practice, I have been able to ease the pain affecting my lower back and I have been able to take the pressure off of my hip abductors that have been compensating for the lower back pain.
            Throughout my time in this course I was happy to be exposed to the many different forms and beliefs surrounding yoga that have created western yoga that I have been exposed to today. I see now how different Western yoga is in comparison to Eastern yoga, a much more traditional form of yoga practice. I now identify myself as a Western yogi as my practice is primarily physical, which is a primary goal of many other yogis practicing in the West. The goals of yoga in the East are much more mental and spiritual. Yoga in the East is regarded more as a way of life than just an hour out of their day to practice. Yoga in the East is often a constant, never ending practice, with the end goal of achieving enlightenment and releasing their souls from the cycle of life and death.
            I think that yoga can and should be a part of everyone life at some point because I feel that the benefits behind yoga can relate to the problems of every person in some way, shape, or form. Yoga is defined by the individual person, not by others, and your goals and methods of practice should be defined by yourself and not change due to outside influence. It is up to the individual yogi to define their yoga practice and use it in the way that best fits their current status in life so that they may achieve the optimal benefits for their current situation. For some people, the benefits of yoga may be minuscule or ultimately nonexistent, but I posit that the vast majority of humans will be able to experience many benefits of yoga practice as long as they keep an open mind and maintain consistency within their practice.

Yoga as a Religion

              Yoga is not a religion. That being said, yoga can act as a supplement or a compliment to religious practice and traditions without interfering or disputing ones beliefs or faith. Furthermore, similarities and skills developed throughout years of practice as a yogi can assist your religious disciplines when it comes to the extremes of religious practices that require a great amount of discipline and focus.
              Throughout history, yoga and famous yogis have marginally attempted to keep themselves removed from religious quarrels and disputes in an attempt to harmonize the relationship between yoga and the rest of the known world. Yogic teaching never attempt to dispute or criticize other religious practices, therefore it can be practiced by Muslims, Christians, Catholics, Hindus, and any other religious practices.
              Yoga should never separate itself from religion entirely as it can survive and thrive being recognized as a compliment to religious traditional practices while maintaining a neutral stance between all religions. I see yoga more as a lifestyle and as a form of discipline that is useful for enhancing quality of life and possibly performance in other arts and religious practices.

Weekly Journal Entry: Yoga as Meditation

                I have some familiarity with the relationship between yogic practices and meditation practices due to my enrollment in a past mediation course offered here at Stockton with Patricia Donahue. In the class we routinely referenced and practiced yoga techniques to coincide with our mediation techniques. Aspects of yoga such as breath control, focus, and calmness are all relevant in meditation as well. All of  these traits are good traits to have when attempting to slip into a state of deep meditation.
               Certain meditation positions are also relatable to yoga stances and postures. An example would be the lotus position common in Zen Buddhism. Zen Buddhists will meditate in the lotus position by crossing both of their legs and holding their feet up by their hips or upper inner thighs. This is a position that requires a good amount of flexibility, something that an experienced yoga practitioner would be able to accomplish.
                Although there are many similarities between yoga and meditation, being proficient at yoga does not mean you will automatically be a proficient meditator. The goals of meditation and the goals of yoga often do not overlap, especially in the West. A yogi in the West is often looking to improve their physical body and get a workout in, while an experienced meditator is simply trying to immerse themselves in a deep, meditative state. A yoga practitioner may have to modify their goals and expectations in order to meditate successfully.

Weekly Journal 11/11/16

              Through the ten weeks of this yoga course I have found myself developing a greater appreciation for the cultural history behind yoga and how it has transformed throughout the years. I feel as though I have adopted the newer forms of yoga as a healing and therapeutic practice in recent week. Last week I received a diagnosis that I have two bulging discs and a herniated disc and my lumbar and sacral crest. As a result of this diagnosis, I am forced to monitor and manipulate my training regimen for fighting to accommodate my struggling back.
              I have essentially decided that I will be using yoga no longer as just a method of warming up or cooling down from a hard training session. I am going to increase my commitment to viniyoga and developing my core muscles around my injured back in order to strengthen my body as a whole. This idea has been supported by various medical professionals that I have spoken with in the past week including chiropractors, physical therapists, and pain management specialists. All of them support holistic, alternative healing methods such as yoga.
             Through a more consistent practice, I aim to increase the strength, stability, and flexibility of the muscles surrounding my injured lumbar and sacrum. Doing so will allow me to return to a more normal fight-training regimen in the near future. Currently, I have begun training again but the process is slow and I am training very light as I ease my way back into my schedule. I feel that this injury has made me more aware of how I should take care of my body in the future as I have come to realize that I am not invincible and that I need to start slowing myself down when I feel pain and agony. This diagnosis has also motivated me to further explore other forms of alternative healing such as yoga as it is both a healing option and an exercise option for both my mind and body to associate with a form of training when I am too injured to train at my normal pace.

Journal Entry #8: Yoga as an expanding culture in the West

                 Yoga has taken on many different forms and practices since its debut in the western world. Yoga in the West is both a physical and cultural movement. In the West, the goals of yoga are varying while in the East, the goal of yoga is singular. Western yoga is associated with goals such as weight loss, body toning, increased flexibility, feeling as though you are a member of a community, and spiritual and mental health. In eastern yoga, your one goal is to release yourself from the cycle of life and death, a purely spiritual journey and end goal.
                 Take a practice such as Viniyoga for example. Viniyoga is a Western form of yoga that has gained increased popularity for its backing by various peer reviewed medical journals in the West. The medicinal and therapeutic properties claimed to be gained through the practice of Viniyoga are supported by medical professionals. Viniyoga maintains the purpose of healing, increasing stability, and increasing flexibility in the lower back, sacrum, and hips. This sort of goal and practice is something that would be unheard of in the East.
                 In my one experience with Viniyoga, despite the boring video, I found it to be extremely useful for me. As someone who has a history of lower back, hip, and sacral pain, I found this form of yoga very calming for my back pain, as it took the class through motions slowly without putting a ton of strain on the injured areas. I felt like the goal of Viniyoga was more to strengthen the core areas around the lower back, sacrum, and hips. This is a practice also performed by physical and occupational therapists when considering options on how to rehabilitate an athlete with an injured back.
                 Just yesterday I received news from an MRI result that I have a bulging disk in my L3-L4 vertebrae, a bulging disk in my L4-L5 vertebrae, and a herniated disk in my L5-S1 vertebrae. This news has really tempted me to join a primary yoga school, specifically one that focuses on therapeutic principles such as Viniyoga. My goals behind this would be to strengthen my core muscles around the injury as well as increase flexibility so that I may return to my fight training as soon as possible.

Weekly Journal Entry #7: Yoga as a Lifestyle and Culture

            Yoga as a "pop culture" is a new, evolving concept in the West. From what I have observed, yoga in the West is a physical exercise, a spiritual outing, as well as a lifestyle-altering practice. Yoga in the West comes with various connotations and stigmas, some of which we discussed in class. One area where yoga affects "pop culture" is in dieting fads. The stigma attached to the life of a disciplined yogi is that of a low-calorie, "clean" diet. Yogi's in the West assimilate themselves to the western culture of yoga that desires a slim frame and a lower body weight for better movement and flexibility. Many aspiring yogis beginning their yoga journey in the West start their journey wanting to be the stereotypical Western yogi, a skinny, fit human being with fantastic flexibility and range of motion.

           Yoga in "pop culture" has also changed the attire of people in the West, specifically women. It is my understanding that 20-30 years ago women weren't wearing yoga tights on a daily basis in public. Yoga has also started a fashion movement where women are comfortable wearing attire that is designed for yoga practice outside of the practice room. I think that this is important to note because yoga pants are not a popular thing to wear in public in other areas around the world, this is purely a western-centric concept.  

           The effects of yoga on the West are widespread. In a way, I am happy for the presence of yoga in the West as I feel that in moderation, it does promote a lifestyle that is far healthier than the lifestyle that most people in the West adhere to. I believe that yoga has many health benefits and these are being revealed at a faster rate now that yoga has gained popularity in the West. I believe that long term effects of yoga will include reductions in obesity, stress, and an increase in spirituality. 

Weekly Journal Entry #6: Yoga as a Healing Practice

             Yoga is a healing practice that is essential in speeding up physical recovery and flexibility as well as enhancing your mental state when it is in disrepair. In my practice space, yoga is used and taught primarily as a healing art. Myself and my fellow trainees use yoga to cool down and speed up our recovery process after a hard day training various martial arts and weight training. Yoga is communicated to me as a holistic method of treating your body to relaxing exercise after an intense workout.
             This yoga practice is performed and viewed the same by all members in my class. My fellow yogis all use yoga as a way of emptying an decompressing the mind, as well as to improve flexibility and physical recovery speed of the body so that they may return to more intensive training sessions sooner. After doing yoga, I feel a sense of inner calm and physical relaxation of my bones and muscles. I feel like my body is lighter than when I started my morning after I finish a yoga session. My body feels like it can bend and move in ways that it could not normally do previously because yoga acts as a method of expanding my bodies horizons past what my mind originally believed it to be capable of.

Journal Entry #5: Yoga Practice as a Community

             My practice space for yoga promotes a strong sense of community through practice. My teacher establishes common goals for the group to achieve while not interfering with the personal goals of the individual that vary from person to person. Through achieving common goals we build relationships through hard work and training and grow stronger as a community. It also helps that many of the people that I practice yoga with are not yogis in the traditional sense and are using yoga as a supplement to other methods of training in order to enhance certain qualities of their workout regimens.
             This sense of community can only be defined as a team mentality. The group that I train with achieves goals together, fails together, and tries again as a group. The yoga room in which I train is a team of developed athletes looking to improve themselves using an alternative method such as yoga. The purpose of a team mentality is to instill a sense of belonging and oneness with your training partners. We believe that suffering together is much more enjoyable than suffering alone and that yoga is a great way to build stress-free, meaningful relationships between each other.
             I feel a strong connection to this community and have no trouble belonging. The group that I train with is very intense and goal-oriented, much like myself, and they are there to work hard and never give up. The sense of belonging that I get stems from a commonality in the goals and values of my training partners. It is much easier to feel a sense of belonging with your training partners when your values overlap both in the training room and in life. My teacher always tries to establish bonds between himself and the students as well between other students in order to strengthen the sense of camaraderie in the room.

Weekly Journal Entry #4

                In regards to the Nevrin article, my practices involving yoga can be seen as ritualistic. There are two times in which I habitually practice yoga, either before or after other forms of training or physical activity. A primary use for yoga in my life is to warm up before training or to cool my body down and stretch after a hard workout. Rarely do I practice yoga and just train yoga in any given day. Other habits in my yoga practice include a constant attentiveness to breath as well as always including a variety of lower back stretches. My yoga practice revolves around physical recovery and rehabilitation. Since I experience a lot of lower back pain due to my years of training in other martial arts, I always use yoga as a focus for my back rehabilitation in order to ease pain and work muscles that I do not use often. Furthermore, breathing exercises are also a staple in my yoga practice. As I mentioned in a previous journal entry, a similarity between yoga and the martial arts is in their practices on proper, calm breathing. I recognize this connection and always use a segment of my yoga practice to just breath normally because of its applications to my martial arts practice.
                These ritualistic behaviors increase the intensity of my yoga practice because I enter the practice with goals in mind that I feel need to be accomplished before I can finish my yoga session. Having these goals in mind of improving my breath and healing my lower back change the impact that the yoga class has on me. I feel that entering anything, including a yoga session, with goals in mind leads you to having a greater sense of accomplishment at the conclusion of the session. These goals also create a more intense nature to my experience because I feel that if I am not able to accomplish these goals during my yoga practice, my practice is not a successful one. All of this being said, breathing and lower back stretches are the only two constants in my yoga practice. My instructors like to mix it up each time when training yoga in order to hit different parts of the body before or after training depending on what we are doing before or what we did previously in training.

Weekly Journal Entry #3

          In my yoga space, yoga is rarely seen or taught as much more than an exercise for the physical body. The people that I practice with, as well as myself, use yoga as a supplement to other forms of training to increase core strength, balance, and flexibility. We achieve these goals by using various forms and poses common to yoga such as the warrior series, downward dog, and tree pose. Yoga is seen as a form of physical empowerment in my daily practice. I view yoga as a way to warm up my body and stretch before a hard training session or as a cool down stretch after a hard training session to quicken the recovery speed of my body.
          One way in which my teachers teach yoga as more than just a physical empowerment is through focusing on the breath. Breathing normally is essential not only in yoga but in the martial arts as well. Proper control of your breathing improves your technique and conditioning in harsh circumstances or situations that are less than ideal. Through the use of various breathing exercises, I calm myself and my mind during my yoga practice, and this practice carries over to my training in jiu jitsu and muay thai, where proper breathing is essential if you are training for extended periods of time.
          I feel that the reason I prefer yoga as a supplement to my training as opposed to running or zumba is because yoga preaches an inner calm that I feel is more beneficial to my other practices in comparison to other exercises such as zumba or running. Having an art such as yoga that preaches proper posture and breathing techniques, you have a mindset that is interchangeable with the mindset of a martial artists. Practices such as breathing correctly and proper posturing are essential to proper technical advancements in martial arts training.
             

Weekly Journal Entry #2

                 When it comes to my practice space for practicing yoga I feel that I am in a unique position compared to most other yoga practitioners. I do not consider the space in which I practice yoga to be a "sacred space". I think that this mindset comes from my instructors in the various martial arts, we see the mat as a place to learn, improve, sweat, and bleed. When it comes to showing respect, we show respect more to our training partners as opposed to our practice space. Furthermore, my yoga practice often has a focus purely on the physical aspects of yoga, with very little meditation and a lot of positional holds such as warrior and tree. Our goal with taking a very physical approach to yoga is to improve our balance, stability, and sense of calm when training other martial arts such as jiu jitsu or muay thai. The people that I train around are not yogis first, but martial artists.
                 In terms of decoration, our space for yoga practice is very bare with white, matted walls on all sides. Along one side of the room is where we keep most of our equipment and pads for various striking arts as well as heavy bags on the other side of the room. In comparison to other yoga practice spaces, I feel like we are on par when it comes to creating a calm, distraction-free environment for training. Our rules revolve primarily around obedience to our instructors and respect to our training partners. When practicing vinyasa, the mindset is comparable to that of a martial artist. Everyone in the room is looking to improve their physical prowess in terms of core strength, balance, stability, and flexibility.
                The way in which my normal practice space differs from a purely yoga-centric environment is in the noises. At times while we practice yoga you can hear the sounds of heavy bags and pads being hit or people rolling around on the mats from the other room. This environment does not bother us since we practice Vinyasa from a purely physical standpoint. We do not do much in the way of spiritual meditation as we are using yoga as a component of our martial arts training in order to enhance our skills in the other martial arts. I think that is approach to yoga is becoming increasingly popular as more people, especially men, are seeing the benefits that yoga can provide in terms of free movement and flexibility.

Weekly Journal Entry #1

                      As someone who has been practicing yoga for almost three years now, I can bring a more experienced perspective and outlook to the room and give a good read on the environment and the people training around me. The physical environment is rather simple, I frequently practice yoga in tandem with various other martial arts including wrestling, Muay Thai, and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. The environment that I practiced yoga in tonight was simple, a matted floor with matted walls, bare as can be. I enjoy a practice space that is light on earthly distractions while I am practicing both yoga and the martial arts, and I believe that the two have many similarities in terms of proper practice and the mindset during practice.
                      The class I attended was an Advanced sweat yoga class designed for well conditioned athletes and fighters as well as experienced yoga practitioners. In the room during a session such as this you see men and women who take great care of their bodies and maintain a peak physical form. That being said, everyone also shares the mindset that there is always room for improvement, be it in yoga or in matters off of the mat. This unique blend of martial arts and yoga creates a training environment that breeds competition and encourages and motivates everyone in the room to improve themselves so that they may further improve others in the process.
                     While performing Yoga in this particular setting, I focus on my breathing throughout. In such a harsh and heated environment with other top-level athletes, I am motivated to push myself throughout the session and maintain focus on my breathing instead of how tired my muscles feel, or how hot my body feels. I take a similar approach when training martial arts. I am always trained to remain calm in adverse situations, a skill that is applicable not only to the martial arts, but to Yoga, and even to everyday situations in life. My goal for this particular session is to get a good workout in and improve myself in some way, whether it be mentally, physically, or spiritually. This environment breeds a desire to improve for fear of falling behind the others in the advanced class, and I feel that this environment is best for breeding high-level athletes and efficient human beings in the community.