FITNESS. FASHION. FOOD.
"Lay down and close your eyes. Let the weight of your body ground you."
Gentle Yoga, how to relax and exercise: My experience at The Buddhist Centre
By Giada Bocca 19 April 2018
Many people think it’s easy, others think it does nothing to relax them. I say yoga is a perfect mixture of relaxing and getting some exercise done if you don’t have much time and you don’t care about going to the gym.
The Buddhist Centre in Holloway Road, London, offers many different curses – gentle yoga, meditation, and Buddhism – available to anyone.
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The class is a downstairs room with few windows, the atmosphere – at first impact – is one of pure peace of mind and relaxation. The people (or students) were mostly elderly women or men, with just two in their twenties.
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- Anna Jones, yoga teacher
YOGA POSES
Tree Pose or Vrikshasana: This posture is a close replica of the steady, yet graceful stance of a tree. For this pose you are required to keep your eyes open so that your body can balance itself. This asana has a host of benefits.
Lotus Pose or Ladmasana: the feet are placed on the opposing thighs. The asana is said to resemble a lotus, to encourage breathing properly through associated meditative practice, and to foster physical stability.
Warrior I Pose or Virabhadrasana: ideal for all practitioners, is the "spiritual warrior," who bravely does battle with the universal enemy, self-ignorance (avidya), the ultimate source of all our suffering.
Lord of the Dance Pose or Natarajasana: Shiva is often shown in a circular frame, which represents the cosmic fire that both creates and destroys everything. The use of fire within the depiction of Nataraja is also a significant nod towards transformation.
The teacher, Anna Jones, welcomed everyone in the room and started the lesson telling us to lay down our mats.
“I attended my first yoga classes as a student at seventeen-years-old and I just loved the feeling of peace and calm that I walked home with after each class. Especially when it came to exam time, I really appreciated the capacity that yoga gave me to handle stress more easily,” Jones said.
“Very soon after that I knew I wanted to become a yoga teacher someday, and my passion for yoga had begun. However, it wasn't until my thirties that I felt ready to do my teacher training. I wanted to take my time to gain experience and understanding first. Yoga is such a rich and in-depth field of study – it is a lifelong practice,” she added.
Jones’ philosophy is that ‘yoga is designed to come and meet us wherever we are in terms of fitness and flexibility’. According to her, yoga is a therapeutic practice that promotes health and well-being on all levels – both physical and mental.
This philosophy was absolutely practiced during our class. Every movement of our body had to be connected to a feeling: when we were in the child position we needed to feel how every single bone of our body was connected, to each other, to the floor, and to the air around us.
Jones kept telling us to feel the result of each position and how we should have felt a sense of relax and peace that we didn’t before.
“If you keep practicing yoga, you will see the results. I’ve been doing it for three years and I’ve never been better physically,” said Susan Lee, 63.
During the lesson, we were asked to integrate Hatha postures with the breath; lengthen, strengthen and stretch to relax the body and balance the mind.
Using Lynegar – the energy of Asthanga and the creativity of Shiva Rea’s Prana Flow, we developed strength, flexibility, and stamina.
Before the end of the class, we practiced Shavasana – or corpse pose – to end the lesson in a deeply restful way.
I have to say that my first experience doing yoga went better than I thought. It wasn’t too difficult; the pace of Jones’ teaching was perfect – giving us time to understand each pose and execute it – and the atmosphere with everyone in the room was one of serenity and harmony.
