Wellness

It's Sunday morning and I was enjoying a nice cup of coffee and breakfast while my son watched the movie Cars for the 251st time (that's a small estimate, of course). My husband and I take turns on the weekend letting each other sleep in, and this was his morning to sleep a little later. The weather outside is rainy and windy, making it feel cozy to remain inside in pj's. When Ken gets up I finish my breakfast and get dressed. Not something I'd chose to do in my former life, but now my focus turns to going to the gym to catch a spin class and try out my first yoga class.

The spin class was an hour long and left my legs feeling exhausted. I was tempted to just go home at this point, but I've always wanted to try yoga and didn't want to miss this opportunity. Some people raise their eyebrows at yoga feeling it's too much a part of the 'New Age' movement that hit our society hard in the last decade or so. I've been interested in yoga for a few reasons: to minimize stress and help me relax through the meditation / visualization aspect, and to improve my flexibility to aid my occasional lower back (sciatic nerve) pain. In my workouts I usually focus on either cardio, ab work or strength training with weights. I've been wanting to put what I consider a 'wellness' component into my overall routine and I figured yoga would be a good step.

The class began with light meditation and listening to positive affirmations. It was very calming and helped you to 'center' yourself (sorry if I'm getting too New Age here but bear with me). We then moved to various yoga stretches and positions on our mat, all with relaxing music in the background. My flexibility was not bad and it felt great to stretch so much. The one thing I didn't expect from the routines was how much it caused you to work on your balance and core strength. I can see how, if you're working at a higher level, yoga can give you a very good toning workout.

We ended the hour-long class with a meditative visualization exercise. I had been introduced to visualization techniques through martial arts, where you train yourself to visualize images and feelings during a sustained period of meditation. The whole process is very calming and helps your body relax. I felt extremely good when the class was over and definitely want to attend this class again.

I whole-heartily believe 'wellness' is important to any one's overall health. Stress is an ugly monster that people usually are not aware of until it it too late. If you can incorporate a wellness portion into your routine, it can benefit your health so much, as well as give balance to your life. Now, not everyone needs to learn how to meditate or do yoga stretches for wellness - I believe it's different for everybody. One person's yoga is another person's 30 mile bike ride. Some people get serenity in rock climbing while others find peace in reading a book or gardening. If a person deprives their lives of wellness because they can't find the time to fit it in, they're asking for health problems and general unhappiness within an unbalanced life. Doesn't sound fun to me.