Episode 23 Discovering Yoga – Client Stories with Anna Ware

In episode 23 of The Explored Life: More Than Yoga podcast I chat with Anna who has been coming along to my classes since the beginning of lockdown.

Anna started coming along to my classes around a year ago but really began to feel the benefits of Yoga as a habit when she started attending the online sessions.

As a director of a charity, the convenience, accountability and support of the online classes have helped her to feel calmer and more grounded.

In this episode we talk about how it can sometimes take a while to realise that Yoga is for you – especially if you aren’t naturally flexible.

Perhaps like Anna, you have felt intimidated walking into a Yoga class and decided that maybe it’s not for you? Listen to hear how Yoga can be more accessible and inclusive so that you can feel the benefits of the practice.

We finish by discussing the perception that Instagram can give us about what Yoga is, and how sometimes that can take us away from what Yoga is really all about in the first place.

Frances
Hi Anna.

Anna
Hello.

Frances
How are you?

Anna
I’m good. How are you?

Frances
I’m alright thanks. I’m having one of those days where I should probably just stop doing anything. It’s just not happening. Like I didn’t even send you the zoom link. And my 12 o’clock, which I got totally confused about because it was a podcast episode with a teacher in America. And so I got the times completely wrong. I thought she was four hours behind me but she’s four hours ahead. And so I was all ready, prepped, you know. And then I was like “oh it’s nine o’clock tonight”.

Anna
Oh no! I hate those days. They are rubbish days, and to do it on a Monday as well that is the worst isn’t it.

Frances
luckily I don’t have anything… like, obviously these are important, but this is a lovely chat that we’re going to have. But, I’m just going to stop after this and go for a walk.

Anna
That’s a good idea. That’s what I find is always the best remedy. To go for a walk, leave the house, put everything down.

Frances
Stop trying to do stuff.

Anna
Yep, and just give up. I do that. Especially working from home all the time, we just give up. You’re just pushing against a brick wall right now. Go for a walk round the block, you’ll be fine.

Frances
Yes. A hundred percent. Thanks so much for joining me today. How are you feeling? Are you alright?

Anna
Yeah. Not too bad.

Frances
Good. Well, I thought we’d start with a little bit about your background Anna. So, you work for a charity. Is that right?

Anna
I do. Yes. So, I suppose my career started really in sales and business. So I worked in sales. I worked back in New Zealand, where I’m from, and I moved over to do retail sales in London and then I did recruitment, and then internal recruitment so I worked in the city for quite a few years. And when I got made redundant on my internal recruitment role, I thought, I don’t really want to go back into the private sector. I don’t really want to go back into necessarily HR, or recruitment, or sales. And so I took some time off and did voluntary for about two or three months. I did a lot of conservation volunteering and I did some projects, some mini projects with different groups, which was fantastic. I absolutely loved it. And then I was lucky enough to get a role as a community development officer on the back of some of the volunteering and the connections and stuff that I’d made and that put me, I suppose, into the charity sector, and I think from that point on, I really wanted to stay in that area. I did a master’s in voluntary and community sector studies, which was fascinating because obviously I didn’t really come from that kind of charity background so that was really interesting too. So now I’m a director of a charity, based in Kent.

Frances
Which charity is it Anna?

Anna
It’s Migrant Help. We support asylum seekers, victims of trafficking and refugees.

Frances
Amazing! What wonderful work. That’s awesome.

Anna
Yeah, challenging but good.

Frances
I bet. So that’s kind of leading nicely into my next question which was why yoga & meditation? What drew you to those modalities?

Anna
Well years and years ago I used to do quite a lot of meditation. I think before I came over to the UK I was probably into it a lot more and I did it a lot more regularly. And then just dropped it for 15 odd years or something, and didn’t really get back into it, and then I think I very much live in my head, so I have a lot of anxiety. I can get quite caught up in all of that side of things. And I think it just got to the point where I just needed something to really calm myself down. And I’ve tried yoga before… lots of different types of yoga over the years, and I’ve had really differing experiences with it, and I actually just gave up on yoga and just thought “You know what. Yoga is just not for me actually. That is not something that I really want to do. I just don’t think I get anything from it, etc”. I tried all sorts of different ones but I never really felt comfortable in the classes. I never really felt like I connected. But I think it just got to the point where I thought… you know what, there’s one just literally a couple of minutes from my house. Let’s give it a bit of a go. And I just felt really comfortable, and I think was the first time that I’d done yoga where I felt like it didn’t matter that I couldn’t touch my toes or that I was really inflexible or that I didn’t even know what a downward facing dog was, and it didn’t really matter… any of that stuff, and I could relax into it a bit more. And then I have to say that actually it was lockdown and a lot of the online classes that helped me to get more regular because sometimes you get home from work, you kind of stressed you do all this home stuff and then having to get your kit on and get dressed to go to yoga, even if it is only a five minute walk away was actually quite difficult to do regularly. Whereas with online, as soon as the lockdown happened, I could just literally wear whatever I was wearing and walk upstairs and it worked a treat for me. And that was when it became a habit I think. It really helped me to make it a habit.

Frances
Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s so cool. And that’s so funny because that was my next question… have you managed to make it a habit? And how wonderful that, obviously with lockdown, there’s been so many challenges but it has opened up this new awareness of how we can do stuff online. And I totally agree. I’ve had the same sort of experience, where I probably never would have done a yoga class online before lockdown, and now I go to class with a teacher who I’ve been following for ages and she’s in Brighton, and I never would have been able to go to her classes. And like you say you can wear your pyjamas, you can just go to the next room or whatever, and there are all those barriers to our motivation aren’t there, especially at this time of year, like the dark nights. You get home, you basically feel like you’re ready for bed at about six o’clock, don’t you, so trying to sort of get out of the house, get into your yoga stuff, get in the car, drive to a cold hall, which is kind of what we used to be doing, isn’t it, is not always easy to keep that practice going. That’s just those barriers to our motivation so I’m really pleased that you’ve managed to make it a habit. So how does it make you feel, having that habit?

Anna
It’s interesting actually, because I think that I’ve heard that some people sort of say that when they do yoga classes and things like that, they feel kind of relaxed and they feel taller and they walk higher or whatever, but actually when I finish a yoga class, I feel shorter by quite a lot, and I think that’s because I live so much my head with all this anxiety and everything like that, that actually it’s yoga that really grounds me and makes me feel like I’m more solid, more stable and on that basis kind of closer to the ground, which is when I think, that’s when I feel like it’s been a really good session is when I actually feel shorter.

Frances
I love that!

Anna
Yeah, yeah. So I think it reminds me about how not grounded I am, I think, and because I do live in my head so much, I think that’s why, for me yoga is better than meditation, because with meditation takes me a lot longer to quiet, quieten down, relax. I did try that 20 days of meditation and mindfulness and everything like that. And while I found that really helpful, it didn’t always feel quite right, and I think, it’s because it was still quite a mental exercise whereas with yoga, it’s physical and so when you’re stretching all you can think is “oh my gosh I can barely breathe”, or “this is really painful”, or “this feels really great”, and so you’re kind of thinking more about your physical body than what you are about the thoughts that are going through your head and so it really does help me to silence those thoughts.
And so I think, that’s why I found yoga a lot more helpful than perhaps the meditation side, to kind of calm those thoughts and to have that kind of peaceful moments, and then just on a day to day basis when you do it a few days in a row, you’re more aware of how your body feels at different times. You know, all of a sudden you’ll be walking along and you’re taking the dog for a walk and you’ll be thinking about the soles of your feet against the ground, and you’ll be more mindful of kind of how I sit in front of the TV for example. I’ll be like, “oooh, actually”, moving position and just having that physical awareness, which again, keeps me grounded, throughout the day, I think, a bit more than just the meditation side of things. But yeah, I do like meditation, but I don’t feel like I could quite get into it, the way that I can with yoga.

Frances
Yeah, I completely get that and I think it’s probably quite a common thing that people find and I certainly, definitely was exactly the same. The movement aspect, the physical side of yoga gives us something very tangible to focus on doesn’t it, and to focus our awareness on the practice in where we’re training our minds in meditation to focus awareness on something, to start with, whether it’s physical sensation, or the breath, and then later on you go into the meditations where you’re not focusing your attention on anything. And that is more challenging. And there’s lots of different ways of doing it, and different ideas that you can explore and that’s why actually, I like to do lots of different types of meditation. I practice varied types, you know, one doesn’t always do the job for me. And I also find that that’s where the breathing comes in because breath awareness, focusing on the breath is such a wonderful tool when we’re doing something that’s potentially just still. So we haven’t got that movement. So then you can use the breath as a tool, instead of the physical sensation. And yoga is actually like beyond the physical which is the Asana which is the poses that we do. That’s like one limb of eight limbs and they are also then breathwork or pranayama meditation, and so on and so on. And so it’s interesting because I think that’s a lot of people’s step into this kind of practice is the physical, because we can all we can all kind of get on board with that, in some way, can’t we, as long as we’re feeling comfortable doing it and not uncomfortable and it’s not putting us off completely.

Anna
Yeah. And I think that’s why I thought I’d never be a yoga person, a little bit, as well because I’ve been to so many classes where I felt really uncomfortable, and just that I didn’t really belong or I didn’t really fit in and I still get that anxiety when I go to like a real life Class of, “where do I put my neck”, “how far away should I be from the mat” and you know, all this type of stuff, “should I sit quietly”, “should I say hello to the person”, all of that, so by the time I actually get into yoga, I’m still a little bit heightened anyway. And that’s even more stress, and that was even more so in some in some particular situations or in classes that I have been in in the past. I remember I went to one where they kind of teach you a certain sequence of poses. I can’t remember what the type of yoga is but it was like a sequence of poses. And then once you master that sequence they then take you to the next level of poses and all this sort of thing. But when you go into the class you’re with people at all different levels, so I walked into the class… my friend did that sort of yoga, so she said come along, and it was the most peaceful room you’ve ever been in.
But you know, I kind of walked in and there’s someone literally upside down on their head doing a handstand and very advanced kind of yoga poses. And I just thought my energy… I’m so nervous that they must be able to just feel the energy of this person who just walked into the room and I must just been a ball of nervous energy and everyone else was really peaceful and doing the yoga, and even things like that, I actually really enjoyed that. But I kind of couldn’t feel quite so comfortable in the first instance I think, because I was like, “Oh my gosh, what am I walking into”. So, I think it is an element of being… you’ve got to kind of get through that, I think, a little bit, to be comfortable in yoga and to be in the right kind of class for you. I think that’s a big part of it.

Frances
Yeah i agree and it’s great that there’s so many different types of yoga out there that there is surely something for everyone. And classes can vary so much, depending on the different styles. I mean my philosophy and my belief is that, I think that yoga class should be an environment that is welcoming and inclusive and I kind of feel like hopefully we’re moving away from, in the yoga world, that idea that you have to… it’s almost like an initiation, that you have to kind of get through, and it’s like joining a sort of club, you know, get accepted by the club or something you know. A members club, you know, very exclusive, and you can only join if you can touch your toes and do a handstand. So I think that I feel like hopefully we’re moving away from that because I’m not sure that.. that doesn’t necessarily fit with how I understand yoga to be. Well, my idea is that it’s here, it’s a practice that’s there to help people, to help all of us, me as well hopefully. So hopefully more and more yoga classes are becoming more and more inclusive and welcoming and so that you wouldn’t feel that way when you walked into them. What have you found is the best thing about having signed up to the membership?

Anna
I think a lot of it is accountability. So, you’ve signed up to the membership, you’ve signed up to a group. So I think it’s having those classes coming on a regular basis you know that they’re there, you see the same people in a lot of the classes as well which is quite nice. But I think, a lot of it is seeing the posts go up, seeing people, communicating or “yep, I’m going to come to this class this week” or things like that. It does make you feel a lot more accountable, and just more like the class is available to you whenever you want to. If you can’t attend the class on a particular Thursday night, you can watch some of the videos or follow pieces in your own time. So yeah, I think it’s that kind of group mentality of having that support and having lots of people doing it and getting involved. Supported

Frances
Yeah. I agree. Yes. I think that accountability and support, are really important aren’t they for helping us to stay with a habit that we want to form, because life is busy and there’s so many distractions and so sometimes we just need a little bit of an extra, sort of knowing, that like you say, other people are going to be there, see the same faces. I find there’s a real connection, even though we’re doing it virtually online. I get a lot from the live classes, and I think for me, because you see some memberships and it’s just the video only but for me I really think the live classes have something added an extra.

Anna
Yeah, absolutely, And also, if you miss one, then you know that you can just join the next one as well, like it’s always there, if that makes sense. So it’s kind of just feel like it’s a lot more available.

Frances
Yeah. That’s great. Well thanks so much for talking to me today Anna, I really appreciate it.

Anna
No problems.

Frances
And so what do you think. Will you just continue to practice yoga? Would you ever be interested in deepening your practice more or learning more stuff? Is anything you particularly want to delve deeper into?

Anna
Oh, I think for me, I suppose I’m still strengthening, a lot of my body. I still get the shakes an awful lot. Sometimes I still can’t hold poses a great deal. Things like Downward Facing Dog still isn’t necessarily particularly comfortable to me to hold for a long period of time. So I feel like there’s a lot more I could do in that kind of way and it’s quite interesting isn’t it, because I watch, I follow people on Instagram or something like that and you see these people do these amazing poses and you think “Oh, I want to be able to do that”. And so then there’s kind of this thing of I want my yoga to be to the point where I can do these ridiculous moves that involve, you know, bending yourself in all sorts of positions. But I’m still very early on my yoga journey so I know that I’m going to be very far from that but also it’s not necessarily about looking like those people if that makes sense, and it’s kind of fighting that mentality of that keeping up with the Joneses or my yoga practice has got to look like that. By the time I’ve done it, in a year’s time I too will be able to do this ridiculous pose and look at me standing on my head, but it’s actually the journey and so I have to kind of pull myself back from that and go… It’s not about being able to pull a fancy yoga pose and make yourself feel like you’re a really good yoga person, it’s about the journey, it’s about every time you do a practice you feel more grounded, you feel more calmer, you know you’re out of your head and you’re into your body, and it’s about that rather than perhaps that we want to see. So one part of you is like “oh I want to practice some really difficult moves and get more into proper yoga type stuff” and then the other part of me is like, “no, no, no no, you just want to do it day by day and just keep practising.

Frances
Yeah, that is so, so insightful and it’s something that I’m thinking about loads myself at the moment. And actually, I’ll probably be covering that in the next podcast episode that I’m doing where I’m talking to this yoga teacher that I was telling you about in the States. And this idea of how. Those pictures, the images that you see on Instagram. Doesn’t that do that to all of us. It does it to me. I’ve actually unfollowed all yoga teachers on Instagram. I’ve unfollowed them all because I found that it was taking me into the same mentality that I had been trying to remove myself from with yoga. So just using yoga as another way of achieving, these ways that you get caught up in patterns of behaviour that aren’t necessarily where you want to be, or aren’t necessarily the best things for you. And so I totally recognise that, and it’s very insightful, you’ve just nailed that yourself. And it took me a long time. It’s only recently I’ve just thought “Hang on a sec.” And it was really strange actually because I just was researching something, and I was looking at yoga teachers again on Instagram and it actually blew me away. And I was just thinking, because I don’t even do any of that stuff anymore. I don’t try to do it anymore because I’ve realised that actually, that’s not what my body needs. And actually when I take those pictures away from me I don’t even think about them anymore. I don’t even think about doing those particular poses, in that way. So, it actually really shocked me and sometimes I think it can get to the point where it’s almost like it’s not even yoga anymore. It’s like contortion and its performance, as it were, you know, rather than… there’s no introspection going on there at all.

Anna
Yeah, that’s absolutely it. And I think that’s what I keep reminding myself and sometimes when we’re doing a yoga practice we’ll pull a move that we might have done before and I’m like, “Oh, this looks like the move from the pictures”, and you get a little joy in that little moment of “I looked like a proper yoga person”.

Frances
Take a Picture now.

Anna
Take a picture now, yeah. That is like reminding you to take joy in those moments, not be like, that should be your practice every day, to be like “look at me, I actually doing a proper yoga pose” and feeling okay in it, and enjoy it in that moment, rather than kind of like feeling that should be all day every day, every practice.

Frances
Definitely. I think that’s it and then the other side of the coin, I don’t want to suck the fun from yoga because there is a playfulness about challenging yourself, and I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with sometimes trying those things that are a little bit weird and crazy, and just for fun, just give them a try, but without necessarily any expectation, or without feeling bad because you can’t do it, because that’s what I think we try to avoid with this stuff. Let’s take away the kind of shaming or, all the stuff that we don’t want in yoga classes to be made to feel inferior because we can’t do something because basically our bodies just aren’t built that way. And that’s often been the case with both these poses, you know, a lot of it is down to the very sort of structure of our body, our bone structure. So we’d never be able to do. It doesn’t matter how many years you did it for, if you did it for the rest of your life. I think lotus pose is probably that for me, and I think I’ve just thought, “No, I don’t need to try and do that anymore.” You know, we all have them, and it’s finding that balance I think between play and and being aware of what we’re trying to achieve, I guess what we’re trying to get from our practice.
Anyway, thank you so much. I’m gonna let you get on with the rest of your day now, and I look forward to seeing you at class again. Maybe tomorrow morning, no Wednesday morning. All right, then my lovely. Well, you take care and I’ll see you then.

Anna
Yeah. I hope the rest of your day goes well.

Frances
Thank you. See you later. Bye.

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