My Experience of Yoga

Ted

A 7th Grader at Hillview Middle School in Menlo Park, California

(This article is mentioned in Susan Brochin’s “Teaching Yoga in a Public School.”)

The way I got started at the yoga club was when my mom started taking yoga classes. As soon as I told her that there was one at school, she started encouraging me to go. Finally, after about two or three weeks of her encouraging me, I had nothing to do one day at lunch and decided it would be fun to check it out.

The first day was pretty fun because the group was already doing Pigeon Pose and Sun Salutations.

Later, in the winter, I had shoulder surgery, which meant that I couldn’t do many of the postures. However, that was only for a couple of weeks, so I was able to get back into yoga quickly. Regardless of the shoulder, I was still able to do things like Savasana and Half-Spinal Twist. Sometimes I only had to skip parts of the poses. It was a great way to learn how to listen to my body.

Later I had a case of poison oak. I let it go too long and it became swollen from scratching. It was almost as if the skin of my right arm was too tight. So, in the club that day, we were doing Sun Salutations, and I could not do it. After all, yoga is all about knowing your own limits and not overdoing it. If you do, you are likely to end up with a pulled muscle or something like that. I learned more about limits through this, and that it’s still possible to do yoga with an injury.

The breathing is probably the most useful thing I learned. For instance, in the summer I am on the swim team and am not very fast. So, on the enormous sets, I usually end up missing the rest intervals. When the set is over, I try to do some yoga breathing to calm down and get ready for the next set, so it does help with that. Also, it helps me sleep.

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