As midterm season creeps up on me, I've been having the "ohmygod, I have to study for five bajillion tests and only now am I realizing I was thinking about cheese when the professor was saying something important, and I have this weird cough that I think is something serious, oh god what if I'm dying, at least I won't have to take my midterm, but holy bajeesus I JUST SPENT AN HOUR FREAKING OUT ABOUT HOW MUCH I HAVE TO STUDY WITHOUT STUDYING AT ALL!!!" feeling that many freshmen are experiencing right about now. So with each moment of free time I have, I end up panicking because I wasn't nearly as productive as I should've been, and only ranted about how much I need to study.
Enter the need for yoga. For the past two years, yoga has been a part of my daily routine, and I attribute my much, much, MUCH more relaxed nature to this practice. Even on the days when I seem uptight, my friends, you haven't seen me in elementary school when I had anxiety attacks when I couldn't figure out what to do next on a computer game. It's amazing how much more at ease you can feel when you engage in a half hour of deep breathing and stretching. But the question is, with limited free time (that I don't take up on this here blog--yes, I see the irony, and am choosing to ignore it), would I feel less stressed if I used the time to review flash cards and watch creepy vampire films, or to have some sort of yogic routine?
Doing yoga in college goes along with the feeling of being at home--it's familiar, it's something I know I enjoy, and much of the time, it's the one thing I can call my own. Sure, I own pants and shirts, but yoga is one of the few things I started not because someone suggested it to me, not because it was popular at the time, but because I wanted to. I use it as a time to encourage both my body and mind to become strong, and to self-reflect. The monotony of homework disappears when I'm lifting up into crow pose, or simply meditating for five minutes. I may not be able to improve myself as a yogi as much as I'd like--even with two hours of yoga and 90 minutes of meditating at Shoshoni, I barely started breaking ground in detachment, love towards all sentient beings, and recognition of the ego--but now, more than ever, I'm realizing how much I rely on yoga to stabilize myself, rather than simply enjoying it.
The purpose of yoga is not to push yourself, but to observe. When most of your day is spent telling yourself to study harder, write better, and basically create more hours in the day (unless you can run on two hours of sleep--I admire those people), you need some time to see how it's effecting you. Because soon after you keep pushing yourself and not taking the time to reflect, you're gonna pile it all up until you reach major meltdown mode.
Sometimes, you just gotta breathe. And that right there is not a hobby.
Namaste.
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