Yogatude: Sandy Springs Yoga Sunday Class

What makes a great yoga class? Is it the teacher, the poses, the atmosphere, or simply that the student is in the right frame of mind? I am not quite sure, but today I went to Springs Yoga’s 4:00pm mixed levels class and it was great. I decided to go to Sandy Springs, because it is about 5 minutes away from Trader Joes, and Sam and I planned to do our grocery shopping afterwards.

As we held our poses the instructor shared little pieces of wisdom with us. Now, maybe if I had not been in the proper mindset I would have been too distracted by my grocery list to listen closely; however, this was not the case today and as my hands firmly grasped the ground in plank position my ears also grasped onto his words.

He kept stressing the importance of acting with your highest attitude. That in a challenging yoga pose, or situation, we must take on a good attitude. This idea became even more powerful when the instructor ended the class with a quote from Victor Frankl, a psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor:

“Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”

As I walked through the aisles of Trader Joes I could not stop thinking about how true this quote was. Our situation in life is not always under our control, but our attitude and thoughts are. It is easy to have a positive attitude when you are grocery shopping with your boyfriend and things are going good, but it is even more important to be able to have a positive outlook when life gets tough.

Fro-Yoga: Springs Yoga

Today I continued my yoga journey through Atlanta with the 8:15am level 2 Anusara yoga class at Springs Yoga. The studio’s website states that it is located on 4920 Rowell, “around the corner from TCBY.” A yoga studio next door to a frozen yogurt store? Now that is my kind of a studio.

Springs Yoga is a very simple studio. There are no meditating Buddha statues or burning incense to be found. The only piece of yoga paraphernalia in the yoga room was a small plant and a statue of the Hindu deity, Shiva. Shiva represents supreme consciousness in the Anusara philosophy.

As we moved through the poses, the teacher urged us to “find our breath.” This made me giggle at first. Had I lost my breath? I was still alive so obviously I was still breathing. A few minutes later he repeated, “find your breath,” and that is when I realized I was not being conscious of my breathing. The body is capable of unconsciously inhaling and exhaling, but we also have the ability to take control of our breath and use it to relax our body and mind.

As I left the studio I was immersed into a sweltering heat that is May in Atlanta. I needed something to cool me off. Since it was still the morning, frozen yogurt seemed inappropriate (and TCBY was not open. Yes, I admit it, I checked). So, I went to get an iced coffee at the Posh Café located a few stores down. As I sipped my drink it came to me that life is like the breath. You can live unconsciously, just going through the motions of each day, or you can awaken to each experience and find your life.