Do you practice yoga or some other form of fitness that has changed you?

I started following a guru called Mooji who has a number of videos on YouTube, and up also attended a retreat he conducted. The point wasn’t to lose weight, but as a result of making it a practice, I was able to feed my body instead of everything else and dropped 30 pounds in six months. Often, I’d go to sleep and wake up a half pound lighter. I did a little running, but it wasn’t nearly as influential. Probably more influential was the change in diet I was able to make toward more brown rice and veggies. I ate very simply and stopped caring about taste. I also lapsed here and there and ate fast food (most recently for a monthlong stretch), but overall the weight came off with a lot less effort than I imagined. I would call the practice of an inner yoga.

Back when I did physical yoga, I just felt good in my body and elongating my spine in the off hours out of habit.

I have the mattress on the floor, It is harder to get up from the ground and it is a gymnastic feat to lie down… I’ve lost 20 lbs. and I look better and my knees are feeling fine.

Yoga taught me when I was 41 that I am older and more wracked than I ever thought. I have always been fit and active and when a back injury that would not go away I found myself on a mat in a yoga class. 90 minutes later I became very well acquainted with the limitations of my body I had become accustomed to. 6 months later….I was flexible again….standing straight and sleeping pain free. 15 years later I do some form of yoga every day as I know just how transforming yoga can be.

I meditate most mornings on the back porch. It allows me to relax and begin my day with a clear mind. I also take pleasure in the contributions of the various birds that enliven the air with their calls. I listen and count the spaces between chirps and try to identify where they are and whether or not it is the same one from yesterday. They have a certain regime that they follow, not unlike my own. There is a wren that is nesting in a box on my porch. I listen for her return in the morning (I don’t know where she goes but I hear her return) It is the whisper of the wing in the air as she pulls up and alights on the limb that alerts me to her presence. It took me several days to realize what it was that told me she was there..

Did yoga for a while and would like to get back into it at some point.

I do water aerobics and water zumba. Not particularly meditative but I feel my most relaxed when I am in water. I think I was a fish (or flightless bird) in an earlier lifetime.

I started doing yoga in January. I had been to one class before, years before with my brother. So basically it was a clean slate. As soon as I started doing it I felt different. My body felt amazing. It is only a few months later and I feel more peaceful internally, more aware of my breath and my thoughts, and externally I am WAY more flexible, I can see noticeable changes in my body, I am motivated to do it every single day (and I do, sometimes two or three times a day!) I have very rarely in my life found something I enjoy as much as yoga. I encourage everyone to at least give it a try. I think it is an absolutely amazing thing. It is the only “workout” I have ever done that is so peaceful, relaxing, and meditative, while at the same time being extremely challenging in basic, beautiful ways.

I practice at a studio. I am fortunate enough to live in a “hippie” town so there are about 20 yoga studios and any time of day you can go to any level class, hot, heated, not heated, yin yoga, whatever you want. It is amazing. I love it so much. Also, I think what a lot of people are afraid of is being judged at the beginning—I have never felt even the slightest sense of that, even when I was brand new at it and clearly not good. There is no judgement—people that go to yoga are not the type to sneer at their neighbor for not being able to hold the pose for as long as they can.

Good for you @deni I totally understand.

I exercise my body with barbells and calisthenics. Yoga never did anything for me, except make me slightly more flexible, but there are other ways to achieve that better.

yes,i grew ½ an inch after about a year of yoga.it keeps me away from the chiropractor.breath is important.strong chi.