Yay4Yoga: Yoga in Vienna

@Power Yoga Vienna

16.00 - Power Yoga Walk with Barbara

What a great studio and awesome class! It was another lovely slow power flow class and really helpful to give me some ideas for the future.Ah, I heart yoga. After having an overly indulgent eating day which included croissants for breakfast, a couple of coffees, berry smoothie, some chocolate and pistachio nuts for lunch and then finishing off with fried camambert cheese for dinner accompanied with a glass of local Austrian white wine followed by italian ice cream for dessert, the yoga was the one shining light from the barrage of bad decisions I made today! This was the best choice by FAR! Despite all of this terrible food (I am still managing to avoid meat as much as I can, wheat is a little trickier in these Eastern European countries), I managed to feel great during and after my yoga class. I was struggling with my newy acquired padding around my stomach and thighs due to aforementioned carbo loading that seems to be a daily occurrence, but managed to do most poses all the same. I "found" my body again. I heard that expression in a class somewhere along the way and today I could really relate to it.

The studio again was all white with high ceilings, but unlike some of the stark feelings that other all-white studios conjured up, this one had an instantly warm, welcoming feel. Perhaps it was the friendliness of the teacher Barbara. She was just lovely and also really pretty close up. She was extremely welcoming and excited when I told her about my journey. She even introduced me to the class of which there were about 16 people. The props, mats etc were all grey, which I thought really softened the studio. I would definitely practise here if I lived here. Also, I actually really want to live here.

My favourite sequence was a short standing series that flowed into each other. It was Tree (Vrksasana), straight into Dancer's (Natarajasana) and then straight into Eagle (Garudasana). It was just really effective in keeping the standing leg engaged for a prolonged period of time and working my muscles that haven't been used in a while. I guess the upside of losing a fitness on this trip has been the appreciation of yoga from a beginner's perspective ie. someone who has never used those muscles before. That's kinda what I felt like!

I'm even getting better and understanding my rechts and links...rights and lefts :-)

The pose that blew my mind for effectiveness was a variation of Revolved Head-to-knee pose (Parivrtta Janu Sirasana). Thanks to Mr Iyengar below, you can see the pose, but just imagine his bent leg was tucked behind towards the buttocks, rather than in front towards the groin. Oh also, most people don't get that top arm to the toe. Anyway, instead of worrying about stretching the side of the body, the teacher told us to hang the head and use the weight of the head to stretch the side of the neck. It was the most amazing stretch EVER! Do it now! I dare you! I absolutely am going to add this to my repertoire and play around with more variations. The possibilities are endless! Also, it's further proof that you don't need all the bells and whistles to have a good workout or rather, asana practise. Just using your own body weight is cheap and effective!

OOH OOH, we also did Revolved triangle pose (Parivrtta Trikonasana) and Revolved wide-angle forward bend (Parivrtta Prasarita Padottanasana) both of which are shown really well on this link. Barbara told us to put our hand on our sacrum to keep it flat as we were revolving and do you know what was the first thing that came to my mind?? The whole metaphor of balancing a cup of water on it as per Yoga in Tamworth class. Crazy! Also on a sidenote, I've been doing it wrong this whole time. The whole purpose of putting your hand on your sacrum is to ensure your pelvis stays parallel to the ground and your upper torso is the one doing the twisting. Idiot! I actually felt the impact of this stretch immediately after doing it correctly. I am slowly but surely piecing all of this knowledge together to make one cohesive lesson in my head for when I return. Well, in theory anyway!