How do you take your yoga? Hanging from a sling, balancing on someone’s feet or stood up on a paddle board? Would you like to gently Hatha, flow through a Vinyasa or get that Kundalini energy rising? And finally, will this be on a rooftop, in the great outdoors or sweating your bits off in a studio with 40% humidity?
It seems that other than the occasional wedding and 40th birthday, where everyone’s invited to get tanked up like old times and climb aboard the shame train for one more journey, we’re starting to do things a little differently. Boozing our way through the two days of rest is no longer the celebrated routine, now we need to stretch our way out of the week and share a filtered snap of smugness about it.
I remember when it used to be enough just to lay in bed on the weekend and have one of those long morning stretches, opposite foot to arm where it pokes out of the top of the quilt. Now I have to get out of bed and then pay £15 to have someone breathing heavily next to me. Both me and my weekends really have changed.
So does this mean getting off your head and out of reality is a dying way of weekending? Or have we all been fixed up a good’en and someone’s just been smart enough to market a stretch to those gullible enough to pay?
Nahhhhh, I don’t think so.
Yoga and its origins date back over 5,000 years. No amount of social media frenzy and #hashtagging can fracture something so deeply rooted in union. Yes yoga is now the latest cool kid on the block and yes it can now be used as another fruitlessly competitive way to compare ourselves to others, but if you’re using yoga to serve that purpose then you probably need to do more yoga, and more and more. Yoga stretches the mind, not just the body y’know #yogamindset
Is yoga the only answer, no. But in a world that offers us the joys of stress, in all it’s various guises here is something that can support you with facing them without losing more of your mind and your self. Instead of the disconnect, it offers a connect to something greater as well as to ourselves and a way to feel and be better in how we respond to life.
But whatever your reasons or your current thoughts about all this absolute tripe/terrificness (delete as appropriate) or whether you’re doing it for the likes or y’know your mental stability, yoga is a multi-million pound juggernaut of brightly coloured lycra and personalised active wear that’s clearing the path for self- medicated love and care. And luckily I can’t see it slowing anytime soon.
So whenever you’re ready come join us, this is yoga darling, there’s always room for one more.
