WHAT IS NOT YOGA?

For some reason, in our country, yoga is always referred to as an activity done by women. Maybe it's because of the fact that I discovered yoga even though I had been doing sports for many years, so it was quite late. First of all, I was prejudiced, I said for a long time that these simple stretching movements would do me any good. I started the yoga and pilates classes in the gym where I did fitness by looking at the door. Unable to resist my friend's insistence that "you must try", they had to scrape me off the ground in the first mat pilates class I entered, it was strangely difficult or it seemed very different to me. For a while, I went to mat pilates classes once a week; I saw that I was able to make very serious gains, especially for the abdominal area we call core, and on the other hand, my body was already becoming more flexible than ever. But I still had my eye on yoga classes, I was officially afraid to walk into a class with no boys.

In my first lessons, my goal was actually to stretch a little and lengthen my muscles, which were shortened by weight training. As someone who couldn't even do somersaults in his childhood, being flexible was of course a serious ambition factor for me. At first, I was amazed that so many different positions (asanas) could be created using their own body weight, they all had different muscle groups working and it was very different from what you could do with weight. Within a few months, I started to see that I had muscles in my body that I had never noticed before. I started to breathe more regularly and correctly, and as I later learned, the breath (pranayama) is actually our most important tool in this journey. Although we don't realize it, our mood is reflected in our breath and our breath is reflected in our mood. I have a lot to share about this but let's say it in other posts.

Again, with the intense support of my friend, I overcame this fear. I'll never forget that in my first lesson, I was officially cowering somewhere in the back, like the lazy kid of the class hiding. It would have been nice if my first yoga teacher, Teacher Figen, hadn't exposed me, saying she was very happy to see a man in class. I was very excited in the first lesson, I wondered if I would be able to do it or if I would be in a funny situation. But then I learned that there's no such thing as not being able to do it in yoga, there's no beginning or end in yoga, it's a journey, enjoying the journey and feeling that moment. But it took a while to figure it out, naturally.

So over the past few months, I've started to practice yoga once or twice a week, loving it more every time I do it, and waiting for yoga classes to come as soon as possible. I was pressing the ground stronger, walking more evenly, breathing more regularly. These were benefits of yoga that seemed very easy from the outside, but they were small compared to other long-term benefits. At the end of six months, I felt that I had to go to a more professional yoga studio, and the work in the fitness center was not enough for me.