Lessons And Benefits Of Online Yoga Classes
While the days of Covid lockdowns are in the past, the benefits of online yoga classes continue. The following post is written by a regular student of the school, Gemma Davies, whose practice has flourished since attending classes online in 2020, and now having the option of attending either in-person or online since life has returned to normal post-pandemic.
When Sydney’s first COVID-19 lockdown was announced in March 2020, I was perhaps the first student at Central Yoga to put my membership on pause. I’m an established stick-in-the-mud regarding both change and technology and I immediately assumed there was no chance that online classes could sustain me. I would simply take a short break until the studio reopened - it was only ‘two weeks to flatten the curve’ after all… This ‘Zoom’ business was best left for the technologically adventurous, the young and the limber.
Like many who arrive at an Iyengar practice I have a complex body, my injuries and maladies both fresh and ancient, and I often needed to modify my practice. I didn’t have the right props or enough space for an online practice, and I couldn’t trust myself to attend to my own specific requirements out of the studio setting and away from careful teachers’ eyes.
Fast forward several fretful weeks and pandemic restrictions were only getting tighter. I had to concede that I was staring down the barrel of an indefinite timeline without guided yoga, and since all attempts at a self-led practice had flopped, I would have to adapt lest I spiral into lockdown meltdown. When I finally relented and logged on, the preceding month off the mat had yielded stiff muscles, aching bones and an uncomfortable and peculiar sensation of both restlessness and stasis.
In many asana we are instructed to leverage upon or even to create physical resistance as a means to consolidate the structure of the pose and move into it with more integrity. We might use the front leg in Virabhadrasana I like a brake and structure the arms, torso and back leg around that tension, or we might gain a greater twist and more lift in a pose like Marichyasana III or Bharadvajasana I by taking advantage of the purchase we can gain from using the static leg like a lever.
My resistance about online yoga in these early weeks was profound and yet I found myself quickly shifting gears into embracing the gifts of overcoming these blocks. For example, in order to make the practice work in my life amid home schooling my son and working from home, I needed to start attending the early morning experienced classes – this truly stretched my comfort zones. Not only was a far more robust practice the demand but I needed to actively vanquish the heavy inertia and distinct lack of motivation I felt at my very core at 6am, haul myself out of bed and just get the practice done. To this day, I still tell myself I can log off and pretend my internet failed if it’s just too much. I’ve never logged off. I may remain grumpy but I have become a reluctant ‘morning person’, which has had a positive ripple effect in many other areas of my life.
It took perhaps 3 months for online classes to feel like ‘the new normal’: to stop wondering what the neighbours thought about the invocation to Patanjali on such high rotation, for my now infamous tabby cat to manage to find a way to sit on me in virtually every asana and for my son to learn to navigate around my complex inversions on his way to get a glass of milk or find his books or magic tricks. Yoga took on a sweet domesticity and where the piles of washing, unread books and to-do lists had at first been very unwelcome atmospheric distractions, the integration of yoga into every day home life gradually became a blessing.
I found that without the spaciousness, surfaces and organisation of the physical studio, I needed to carve these qualities into my psyche to practice well. I needed to focus on the nuances of verbal instruction with more precision, which in turn lent itself to cultivating the light and steady concentration Patanjali himself encouraged. I found myself able and willing to show up to more and more classes each week, building to what has now been a 6 day per week practice for over 2 years. The consistency of working on the mat this frequently has enabled me to gradually and carefully move into asana I had truly believed were inaccessible to me. In March 2020, I could barely withstand a 30 second Sirsanana with my ankles against the wall, or more than a half Savangasana held at half time, due to an old hairline fracture in my cervical spine. Now, in October 2022, I regularly practice a 12 minute free-balancing headstand with variations, I’m working towards dropping back to a full Setu Bandha Savangasana from a full length shoulder stand hold and working hard on flipping up that pesky unnatural leg in Urdha Mukha Vrksasana. The daily, ‘baby step’ processes and incremental work needed to build the structure and stamina required for these poses were only available to me because of online classes and the frequency of instructed practice they have facilitated.
Perhaps the greatest gift of an online practice has been to significantly reduce my perfectionism around practice. In the remove of the commute time and effort to and from in person classes, I have had the opportunity to continue daily practice despite a broken toe, a snapped hamstring and the inevitable COVID isolation over this time. I have experienced practicing, in modified and self-nurturing ways, while coughing and spluttering, managing significant fatigue and several variations of ill health and unexpected life circumstances, coming to experience the potent medicine Iyengar yoga offers no matter how great, or how terrible, I might feel.
Despite almost all COVID restrictions now being a strange memory, as a busy sole parent with days bookended by school drop-offs and pick-ups and working long hours somewhere in between, my practice continues to take place largely on Zoom. This way, I can attend 6 classes a week instead of 2 or 3, and consistency and frequency remain uninterrupted. Online yoga is not necessarily my preference, but it is what is most workable and accessible to me in this time-tight season of life. My visits to the studio are much rarer than I would like, but serve to check in on my progress, touch in with my yoga community and teachers and, of course, hang in those enviable ropes.
All classes at the Central Yoga School can be attended in-person or online from anywhere in the world! Check out our timetable here.