{"id":919,"date":"2021-03-06T10:59:59","date_gmt":"2021-03-06T10:59:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.alison.com\/?p=919"},"modified":"2025-05-15T11:16:56","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T10:16:56","slug":"why-i-decided-to-start-and-stick-with-yoga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alison.com\/blog\/why-i-decided-to-start-and-stick-with-yoga","title":{"rendered":"Why I Decided To Start and Stick With Yoga"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>By Omar B.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-921\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.alison.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Omar-B-150x150.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"90\" height=\"90\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alison.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Omar-B-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/alison.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Omar-B.png 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 90px) 100vw, 90px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There is something in my house I am scared of. It\u2019s a totally normal item. It\u2019s a game actually, my kids play it all the time. I used to play it, and I really liked it, especially because the kids found it so fun. But over the last few years, I\u2019ve liked it less and less, and eventually I became literally afraid of it. I\u2019m talking about our game of Twister.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For anyone who doesn\u2019t know, Twister is a game where you and some friends are told to bend yourselves into ridiculous positions. If someone falls down, they are out of the game. Usually when someone falls down, everyone else falls with them, and it\u2019s hilarious. But not for me. Recently, as I\u2019ve lost my <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.alison.com\/why-i-am-taking-the-diet-and-nutrition-course\/?utm_source=alison%20blog&amp;utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_campaign=Why%20I%20Decided%20To%20Start%20and%20Stick%20With%20Yoga\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">fitness<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, I\u2019ve just become completely incapable of bending at all. The game is, quite simply, embarrassing for me. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, I told a friend of mine that I wanted to fix this, that I wanted to get more in shape, and they recommended <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/alison.com\/course\/yoga-foundations-and-teaching\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">learning yoga<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Honestly, I was a little unsure at first. I\u2019ve done stretching exercises before, not regularly but sometimes, and they never helped me that much. But my friend told me to try yoga for a full month before giving up. So I did, and now I cannot recommend it highly enough.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of the things that\u2019s great about yoga is that literally anyone can start it. Trust me, I am not a fit person at the moment. There are no <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/alison.com\/course\/yoga-exercises-for-core-strength-and-flexibility-revised\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">yoga poses<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that I can do completely right. Most of them, I can\u2019t do at all. But I can <\/span><b><i>try to do<\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> all of them, and that\u2019s enough. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You see, yoga is all about stretching. You find out what\u2019s the maximum you can do right now, and you try to go beyond that. Just trying (and trying over and over again) means that next time, you will be able to go a little further. Over time, I\u2019ve noticed I\u2019m becoming a little more flexible, and things that were tough are not so hard anymore. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But yoga has improved more than my flexibility. This surprised me, but yoga is actually really relaxing. Yes, exercise that\u2019s relaxing. Sounds strange, but it\u2019s true. Apparently, yoga gets your body rhythms into a nice order, so that internally everything feels a little bit more balanced. This has really helped my <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/alison.com\/tag\/stress-management\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">sense of calm<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> during my day, which is really nice.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The most important thing here is sticking with it. Yoga, like any kind of self-improvement journey, gives you more benefits the longer you stick with it, and not many benefits if you only do it now and then. Because I had to do it for a full month before I could give up, I actually started to see that those benefits would slowly enter my life if I kept going. Now that I\u2019m doing it continuously, I\u2019m getting the rewards.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I plan on sticking with this for a long time. I know that the more I do it, the bigger the rewards will be for my <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/alison.com\/course\/physical-education-fitness-training-principles-and-methods-revised\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">physical <\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/alison.com\/courses\/mental-health?utm_source=alison%20blog&amp;utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_campaign=Why%20I%20Decided%20To%20Start%20and%20Stick%20With%20Yoga\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">psychological health<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. As a parting thought, what is the biggest thing I\u2019ve learned from yoga, and something I want to apply to the rest of my life? Doing something helpful sometimes doesn\u2019t help much, but doing something helpful continuously helps more and more each day.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Omar B. There is something in my house I am scared of. It\u2019s a totally normal item. It\u2019s a game actually, my kids play it all the time. I used to play it, and I really liked it, especially because the kids found it so fun. But over the last few years, I\u2019ve liked [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":923,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[741,334],"class_list":["post-919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alison-in-action","tag-health-and-fitness","tag-stress-management","match-height"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/alison.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Why-I-Decided-To-Start-and-Stick-With-Yoga-1024x683.jpg","featured_category":"Alison in Action","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=919"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/alison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6730,"href":"https:\/\/alison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919\/revisions\/6730"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}