"Remodeling is just a pain. We have all these huge mirrors from the seventies style bathroom that we now have to get rid of" I overheard a colleague say in a lunch conversation. "Um.. this is weird, but.. can I have those?" I asked. "You pick them up and they are yours!" she responded, seemingly eager to have them off of her hands.
I went to her house the following day. The day after that, the mirrors were up and ready for use in my personal "yoga studio" (which also serves as storage for our nice horse tack and our guns.. so.. a little bit of everything, ha). I felt weird asking for the mirrors, and I felt even weirder asking my husband to help me install them, but holy crap was it a good decision.
Reason #1: I had been practicing yoga for 4 or 5 years at this point, but it wasn't until I got the mirrors that I realized I had some alignment issues going on in my downward dog. I remember double-taking in the mirror thinking "What?! This is what my downward dog looks like?! How has no one corrected this??" my lower back was extremely rounding, my shoulders were not engaged, and my head pulled back too far, pulling my spine out of alignment. It was a pose I'd done hundreds of times, but without seeing it I settled into what I thought was right ...and it was wrong.
It was a pose I'd done hundreds of times, but without seeing it I settled into what I thought was right ...and it was wrong.
Shortly after this experience I started taking pictures and videos of my practice. It was probably the best decision I could have made. It felt awkward at the start, but eventually it became second nature: anytime I wanted to practice, I'd just set up my phone on video (usually in some sort of time lapse mode), press play, and then forget about it until the practice was done. After, I would review the footage and see the poses where I needed to make adjustments ("oh my knee is dropping in crescent lunge" or "my hip is popping out to the side in tree pose"). I would also celebrate the poses I was doing well in ("sweet - I kept my knees hugged in during wheel pose" or "my hip wasn't poppoed out in tree pose this time"). Taping my practice became a way for me to better serve as my own coach. I could look at "before" and "after" pictures and track my own progress, too, which is huge. It is easy to focus on the present moment in our practice and forget that we have come so very far. That progress deserves recognition.
Taping my practice became a way for me to better serve as my own coach.
Another cool part of taping while I did yoga was that I could very easily share it. This isn't for everyone, but for me being able to share my practice helped me hold myself more accountable. I started to get excited to make minor adjustments I'd noticed in previous footage, so I would unroll the mat and go for it; I saw a cool and fun looking flow on someone's Instagram and I would want to give it a go myself -- social media provided inspiration and motivation for me in my own day-to-day practice.
And while the social media aspect may not be everyone's cup of tea, I truly do belive that we can all benefit from the tangible fodder for reflection that comes from reviewing images/videos of ourselves. As an educator, an expectation that's been set for me is that I will periodically tape myself while teaching, watch the footage, and reflect on things I did well and also areas in which I could improve. This is uncomfortable (and good god my voice sounds terrible on tape..hopefully just on tape? ha!) but I always learn from it. Why not also incorporate such a sound practice into other facets of our lives?
So next time you are about to do ________ (yoga, hobby, etc) go ahead and set your camera up and record your practice. You just might find it to be pretty dang helpful.
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