Yoga is totally a spectator sport
I took a classic yoga class for the first time today. I have taken some pilates and a yoga course while massively, hugely whale-like pregnant, but never a classical yoga class.
It actually went pretty well, the instructor was definitely interesting both kinda hippy dippy yet cool surprising us with comments when we least expected them, like while lying flat on back with legs straight up in the air he said “this exercise is known to iron out those wrinkles on your face” and the best one was when we were stretching out at the end and he did the “classic” lotus pretzel with arms under and through his crossed ankles, knees bent (obviously) and grabbed the back of his OWN head, and said “Do this to really impress your friends at parties”. It was wonderful, I will absolutely be going back for more.
If I can survive that is, I nearly suffocated. Let me explain, I was lying on my back, obediently, legs straight up in the air, further lifting my buttocks off the floor as to propel my legs yet further towards the ceiling – no mean feet (haha) – the next step was to bring my legs down behind my head to touch the floor with my toes. This, was actually easy! Except that in my case I experienced that my OWN Hindenburg sized breasts were suffocating me, one on each side of my windpipe, slowly cutting off the air to my brain. I needed to create my own “classical” Yoga interpretation by using my arms which until this point were meekly at my sides palms down on the floor, I instead had to use them to manually adjust my breasts’ positioning by pushing them apart and down (that is actually up in that position as my feet are behind my head), Thus bringing the airflow rushing back to my nearly brain dead yet transcendent existence.
I think I may have to tape my breasts to my knees (!) before the next attempt although I may risk becoming deaf with my knees next to my ears.
will probably not share your breast problems though!
Ahhahahahhaa! Plow position! Yeah, the same thing happens to me, as you might imagine, only my boobs have my stomach right behind/on top of them increasing the pressure. There are a few of solutions: use a strap to hold your boobs to your ribcage (haven’t tried this one, doesn’t seem practical), wear a serious sports-bra to serve much the same purpose (haven’t tried that one, either), move one boob on each side of your face (works ok), or modify the pose by splitting your legs. A lot of those upside-down poses are challenging for well-endowed women, and often the teachers will not know enough to help you modify the poses. Let me know if you want some guidance–I had to learn a lot about pose modification on my own since I’ve got more chest than most of the other people in the classes combined.
I’m surprised to hear they had you doing plow pose first thing off. Where are you taking classes?