My Experiences with Yoga

It happened about a year ago. I had some health problems, sometimes I had back pain, sometimes I had problems with my legs, my blood pressure was too high - not the best conditions to go on a long hitchhiking trip I had in mind. So I decided that something had to happen to improve my health. Somebody told me to try it with yoga. I followed this advice, and I was looking for informations. First I found a booklet about yoga which contained some basic informations, but it was not very useful to start with a serious yoga practice. So I started to surf the internet for more informations where I found dozens of websites with instructions for yoga practice, some contained only very basic informations, others were more detailed. The most useful website I discovered was http://www.yogabasics.com/ with some very useful advices about the course including an introduction to the philosophy of yoga, instructions how to start with a serious yoga practice and instructions for more than 200 yoga postures, divided by difficulty level from basic to advanced.

And so I followed these instructions. First I learned breathing technics, and the next step was to choose the right yoga postures. I started with basic postures and thoses for beginners which were not to difficult for me to perform, and those postures which where most useful for the improvement of my conditions. First of all, it was a gradual learning process. I was aware of the fact that my first attempts were not perfect, but from day to day I improved my practice - learning by doing! I also added almost on a daily basis one or two new yoga postures to my practice until I could perform about 30 minutes per day, and by the time my yoga practice became more and more perfect. I confess, during the first days and weeks it was more or less stress to practice yoga, and it cost me some efforts not to give up but gradually it became more and more fun. Don't expect the improvement of your conditions after a few days or even few weeks, every thing takes some time, but just in time - after about three month, when I wanted to go on my trip, I felt that I was ready! My conditions had improved, although they were not perfect at that time. During my trip I continued with my yoga practice, and so I did not run into problems. I really started to feel the benefits of yoga, and so I decided to continue to do yoga after my two month trip. I even expanded my yoga practice, which I did in two ways, by adding new or by expanding the length of the older postures. Today, after almost a year of practice, not only my physical conditions have improved remarkably, I also feel mentally much better. Yoga cannot replace medical care completely but the benefits are remarkably. And there is another benefit - I saved much money which I had to spend on "medicine" before.