Once you reach a certain stage of physical fitness, if you listen to your body, it will automatically tell you when you need to change to a different type of yoga class.
After about six months, I knew it was time to move to a more intermediate class with more variety and more advanced asanas..
I started to attend an intermediate yoga class in my community, as well to use some intermediate YouTube yoga videos to continue on my yoga journey. At home, I continued to do the breathing exercises I had learned.
After about one year of doing asanas and breathing exercises (pranayama), I had reached my goal of improving flexibility, building strength and losing a lot of weight.
I had slowly started to realise the powerful effects of yoga on my well-being and was starting to have an awareness of a different level of consciousness.
Sometimes, my intermediate class would turn into a moving meditation. (More on meditation in the
Mind
section.)
However, there was something in me which wanted to experience a much deeper spiritual form of yoga. I listened to my intuition and came across Isha’s Upa Yoga and Surya Kriya after seeing these classes in my local newspaper.
After attending the week-long class, I was completely in awe. The manner of the teaching was very particular and meticulous, with a focus on getting the postures and alignments absolutely right. The visualisation practice ensured we could remember exactly what we had to do when at home.
Although the movements were slow, the focused breathing with eyes closed during the poses led to a fantastic, deep meditative experience.
I highly recommend Upa Yoga and Surya Kriya yoga from Isha.
I made sure to include this style of yoga once or twice a week at home, along with my normal strength-and-flexibility yoga routine. My schedule was now two days of YouTube yoga, three days of my intermediate class, and two days of either Upa or Surya Kriya Yoga, depending on what my body felt like it needed on a particular day.