Let’s talk about yoga. Do you think it’s a calming and low impact form of exercise? While it can be, yoga also offers challenges that are suitable for exercise newbies and professional athletes alike.

Although mastering the form and spending time showing off a perfect yoga pose on an empty beach or atop a scenic mountain looks good, yoga is about building strength. No matter how much I can bench press, there will always be a need for yoga in my life but for many years, I viewed yoga as simply gentle stretching in peaceful surroundings. Pretty much something I would do on my rest day from what I considered to be ‘real exercise’. I loved the calm but at about the 30 minute mark I’d be desperate to leave any yoga class because my mind would start to get busy thinking about all of the errands I needed to do … Watching the clock, I’d be thinking to myself ‘when is this going to be over?’

I knew there were many disciplines of yoga, all with unique benefits and challenges but I admit that I had no idea you could get so strong from practicing yoga.

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