For as long as I can remember, my family has practiced Yoga every day, but not me. Due to my school timings, I didn’t have enough time to do Yoga in the morning, and I preferred to play with friends in the evening. Because of my upbringing, I have always respected ancient Indian sciences and knowledge, so I have wanted to practice Yoga for the longest time. When I changed schools, my school timings got delayed by an hour, giving me a perfect opportunity to do Yoga.
Learning Outcomes:
LO1: Identify your own strengths and develop areas for personal growth.
As I have seen my family practice Yoga every day for almost a decade, I thought Yoga would be easy as a pie. But I couldn’t be more wrong. Simple things like keeping your back straight while doing Pranayama took me several days to get comfortable with. Yoga threw me out of my comfort zone and made me realize that I severely underestimated the amount of effort I would have to put in.
LO2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process.
While there was a challenge every step of the way in Yoga, this thing I found to be especially difficult was meditation. Meditation requires absolute concentration and sincerity, and while it may not make you sweat buckets, your body slowly starts to hurt a lot as you sit for longer and longer periods. It took me many days and a lot of pain & hard work for me to do Anulom-Vilom for 15 minutes. But it was gratifying because meditation calms your mind and revitalizes your energy.
LO3: Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience.
It took me a lot of scheduling to open up an ideal time to practice Yoga. Earlier, due to School timings, Tuitions, and Sports, I couldn’t find a good time to practice Yoga because one should do Yoga after at least 3 hours of eating food. I also talked to some of yoga experts to ask them about the routine I should follow due to my time limitations.
Careful planning and scheduling have allowed me to do things I have wanted to do for ages.
LO4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences.
Yoga involves a lot more stretching than cardio. Stretching is very important as it increases our flexibility and has many health benefits. But stretching is really painful, and as my body was extremely stiff, it caused me extreme pain and lasted for days wherever I stretched. But as I know the invaluable benefits of Yoga, I continue to practice Yoga and even look forward to it every day.
In conclusion, after careful scheduling, I started practicing the ancient art of Yoga, which has fascinated me since early childhood. It proved to be a great challenge even for me because it required absolute discipline and concentration. My perseverance got me through it and allowed me to reap the invaluable fruits of calmness and excellent health, both physically and mentally.
Evidence:
