Christmas Yoga

Tonight was the last yoga class before the holiday break, and my instructor sure made it a good one! We came into the room, and all the lights were out, and she'd strung Christmas lights across the front. She had really mellow Christmas music playing, and she informed us all that this was to be a special relaxing Christmas yoga session.

We each got a towel and a band, in addition to the usual mats. She did some of our usual poses, but she threw in a few different things, and even had us dancing at one point!

I really loved a lot of the things she did with the towels. Sometimes it was just used to assist with our usual poses. For an example, she had us sit on the folded up towel when doing seated forward fold and butterfly, and it did add a little different angle to the stretch. But she also had us do some things where we just laid on our backs and put the rolled up towel in different positions and were instructed to just fully relax and let the towel guide our stretch. It provided a nice lower back stretch by putting it there, and it helped open up my chest (Lord knows my chest needs all the help it can get) to put it behind my upper back.

At the end, she had us all move our mats against the wall, and we did a stretch where you put your behind right up against the wall, lie back, and stretch your legs straight up the wall. Okay, granted, it was quite tricky to maneuver myself into this position! But it felt really good once I was there.

Then, during our final relaxation, she came around with some lavender essential oil and gave each person a little mini foot massage. It was heavenly.

I'm so looking forward to getting back into going to yoga regularly after the holidays!