Yoga in Alaska January 25, 2011

This is the first day of my blog and through the encouragement of my husband, I am very excited to challenge myself to do yoga in 50 states in a years time.  I plan to blog about my experiences of practicing yoga in all fifty states.  The first state that I am going to start blogging is none other than Alaska.  It seems fitting that I start here...

To start with let me share, I have had a wonderful day so far in Anchorage, Alaska.  Although very cold out as you might imagine in January it didn't stop me on my mission to find somewhere to practice yoga.  There were many options for yoga in Anchorage.  I chose to go to the the Alaska Club simply because I figured out how to get there with the help of the Concierge at the hotel I'm staying at.  I decided to go to the Hatha Yoga class because it fit into my schedule.  For further reference to Hatha Yoga check out the wiki description.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatha_yoga  I have not experienced a whole class of Hatha yoga, but I really enjoyed it and the long poses challenged my body and mind.  Hannah the instructor was very descriptive about what each of us in the class should be feeling in the body and letting the breath take control of the pose.  I found myself getting more into the poses with the deeper breaths that I took.

I decided since I had gone all the that way I should stay and do the Restorative Yoga, which was a little over an hour after the Hatha Yoga class.  I decided that the Restorative Yoga would be complementary to the previous class.   During my break I found a little cafe that I grabbed lunch and read for a bit.  The Restorative Yoga class had about six people in the studio.  It was very intimate and it seemed as though Hannah the instructor was able to give individual help because the class was so small.  If she saw a students shoulders tense, she would remind us to relax the shoulders or if our jaws were tight, she would remind us to relax the jaw.  I found the class to be exactly that Restorative.

Yoga in Alaska was a success and I found it to be very therapeutic and meditative.