In my quest to inspire more people to give yoga a chance, it occurred to me that yoga is seen as almost an exclusively female activity.
For as long as I’ve done yoga, regardless of where I am, there are rarely, if ever, any men in the classes. I don’t blame dudes for not participating based on the general perceptions of yoga.
However, I’m going to try to shift those perceptions a little bit because I think that guys could really benefit from yoga, regardless of how fit they are or aspire to be.
Last week, I talked about how yoga is for everyone. Unless you have a specific condition or medical reason that you shouldn’t do yoga, it is absolutely for you.
This week, I’m going to introduce you to an idea that I’ve found many people are surprised by.
Yoga. Shouldn’t. Hurt.
If a pose or flow is causing you pain, it’s time to re-evaluate.
I’m going to take a break from chakras this week to address something that I have heard from lots of people in various contexts:
“Yoga just isn’t for me.”
I’m not saying that everyone has to try yoga or love doing it, but I AM saying that it is, in fact, for you. Unless a doctor has specifically told you that you should not do it, there is yoga that you can benefit from.
Over the last two weeks, I’ve covered the basics of chakras and talked about whether or not they can be useful to a non-religious yoga practice.
Since I’ve established that I do think that there’s benefit to incorporating chakras into a yoga practice to at least a small degree, I’m going to explore the idea a little more fully. I don’t plan on devoting a ton of time to becoming an expert, but I’m the kind of person who likes to look at a thing from all angles whenever possible.
If you’re not that kind of person, that’s okay! You can skim the rest of this series or skip it entirely; I won’t be offended.
For those of you like me, today’s angle is the idea of energy flow in a yoga practice. Chakras are a part of this, but there are also two related concepts that are the focal point of this post:
In my last post, I very briefly went over what the seven chakras are. Truly gaining a deep understanding of them seems, in my opinion, really hard to do.
I plan to revisit each chakra in more detail in future posts, but for now I’m going to focus on answering the question of whether or not an understanding of chakras is necessary or helpful for a good yoga practice.
Before I dive into answering this question, I’m going to answer another question that you may or may not be asking:
Why does this even matter?
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