My Yoga Experience (subpar to say the least)

So as I start this yoga journey, I would like to explain my very limited yoga, as well as general fitness, experience.

General Fitness
I played soccer for about 12 years starting in first grade until I graduated from high school. I also played intramural soccer in college.

Other attempts at fitness include gymnastics (they put me in the "slow learner" group so I quit after one season), swim team (didn't go past 5th grade so that didn't last long), and dance (my teacher told a friend of mine that I was uncoordinated, which of course she passed on to me. What fourth grader wouldn't? So I quit that too.)

Overall, soccer was the only thing that stuck and had it not been for good friends, I may have quit that too because honestly I was never amazing at it because I didn't have the passion to be great at it. I love it now because after twelve years of playing I got better and found the fun in it all. But its really hard to assemble enough people for a pick-up game so that's not really an option for this time in my life.

Yoga
So as mentioned above, I'm already considered a pretty uncoordinated person. As much as that hurt, it was true at the time. I became more coordinated with my feet after playing soccer for so long, but as far as dancing or even yoga goes, I'm a pretty uncoordinated person.

I'm also as flexible as a stick. I can't even touch my toes without bending my knees. (I'm hoping that will change soon). And my upper body strength is pretty lacking as well. I'm pretty small on the top and playing soccer all those years didn't do much to build arm muscles.

In college I took my first yoga class. I went with my good friend Kelly and it was pretty disastrous. I fell a LOT, I felt incredibly uncomfortable, and I swear the teacher and fellow yogis were shooting me death stares for making such racket. I quickly decided yoga was not for me.

Fast forward to about two months ago and I began talking to my friend Danelle about the possibility of trying out one of the yoga studios here in town. She was very excited about it, but I was pretty skeptical. But I decided to give it a try with my friend at the first of the year. So in December I began trying to ease into by doing a few 10 minute videos of the Yoga Solution with Tara Stiles on Youtube. Great videos by the way. She has a great beginners section with about five different videos covering lots of different aspects of yoga like flexibility and breathing. 

So when January 1, 2013 came, we went to the Yoga at the Cottage studio for the Beginner Yoga class. What an amazing class! It was a pretty rigorous class and there were poses I couldn't do, but I felt so restored and energized afterwards. The cool down part made it all worth it because my stress just melted away. I went home and couldn't stop talking to my husband about it. 

So I was ready that day to make yoga a part of my weekly routine. But I didn't have an exercise regimine of any kind so I realized making yoga a regular thing would take some work. First off I normally worked until 4:30 25 minutes outside of town and the class started at 4:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I was allowed to adjust my schedule so I could make it, but that meant waking up 30 minutes earlier and getting to work at 7:30. I decided to try their other class, the 5:30 pm class. I liked it, but it had me getting home at nearly 7. So I put yoga on the backburner for a while.

Fast forward to today. This past weekend I had the flu. I felt terrible, but as I sat there for four days, I made a promise to feel good. Not just not sick, but healthy, and I felt yoga was the way to do that. So I decided I would make my start on Saturday. So tomorrow morning at 8:30 is my first class back and my goal is to go to three classes this week. I'll let you know how it goes!