Image from Lululemon

I’ve been teaching a yoga class at a gym for a few months now. The yoga class is the first one at this location, so the students are all mostly new to the practice. There are several flyers up around the gym that list the benefits of Pilates (one of the group fitness classes that has been on the schedule for years, I’m told). Now, I’m not a competitive type.. (OK. I actually am, but I try not to be), but it bothered me that there were so many flyers up in the gym touting Pilates and yoga wasn’t represented anywhere. So I asked the gym manager if I could put up a few flyers, too. I started to just write out a list of my own benefits (like this one), but I thought it might be more fun to let my students tell me what benefits they’d noticed after practicing yoga for a few months. Before class started last week, I passed around a sheet of paper with the header “Benefits of Yoga” and asked make the list.

I couldn’t have been more pleased by the things they wrote:

More flexibility
Strength
The ability to laugh when you fall
Teach concentration without taking yourself too seriously
Relaxation
Deep stretch
Peace of mind
Feel soooooo good afterward!
Just letting go of the day!

I added a couple about breathing, mindfulness, and self-care.. but I think they pretty much nailed it! It was also a great exercise for me to see what messages I’ve been effective at getting across. I might try this exercise again in 6 months to see how the list changes over time. In the meantime, I hope it helps get more people to the mat.