KX studios Yoga Challenge

This week my ClassPass challenge was to try a new yoga studio. KX studios have been on everyone’s fitness radar, so naturally I have been wanting to try them out for a while now. This was a great opportunity to get my butt down to one of their studios and experience the KX hype for myself.

After several laps around the Coles car park and getting stuck in a late night traffic jam, outside Dan Murphy’s, I finally found a car park several meters away from the KX Yoga studio, Malvern. In fact I found several car spots available. It turns out I was looking in all the wrong places. For once I was early, so there was no racing up any stairs or bursting through any doors.

KX Yoga is a cute, yet surprisingly large studio just off Glenferrie Road. It doesn’t look like much from the outside, but once you get to the top of the stairs, it opens up into a area where us yogis…or wannabe yogis, can get prepared for our stretch sess. After meeting my lovely instructor, Amelia, I was invited to help myself to some herbal tea. The perfect drink to begin my ‘warm up’ on this cool Autumn night.

I had chosen to attend a Yin class. Yin Yoga is all about the stretch. It aims to stretch the connective tissue around the joints and helps improve flexibility. Poses are generally held for 3 to 5 minutes, but can be held longer. I would say the poses in this particular class, were held for more like 5 minutes. The reason why I had chosen to attend a Yin class was because I felt like my body just needed a good stretch. I am back at the gym weight training this year and I’ve also been spending a bit of time at my desk lately, slugging out numerous hours in front of the lappy, so my hamstrings were tight, my lower back was stiff and my shoulders were feeling tense. To say the least, I could not wait for this class to start!

The room was set up beautifully. Dimmed lights and candles spread around the four walls. It was quite romantic! Throughout our time on the mat…and on the wall, Amelia focused on releasing and decompressing the spine. We started off in a pose I don’t often find myself in, yoga or not. Flat on our backs, legs up straight against the wall, so we were on a 90 degree angle. We stayed here for quite some time. Another pose that stood out for me was the ‘banana bend’. I’m not too sure if that’s its technical name…but Amelia referred to us as bending our bodies like bananas. I felt a brilliant stretch in my shoulders, triceps and lower back with this one. The most difficult pose I found was the half wall squat. My hamstrings were even tighter than I realised. We had to half squat up against the wall and then lean forward, stretching out the backs of the legs. This was a fine line between pleasure and pain for me. Of course once the pose was finished, my legs felt great!

As any brilliant yoga teacher will do, Amelia took us through the meditative and reflective side of our yoga practice. Encouraging us to be in the moment and focus on our bodies. One thing she said that really resonated with me was, “your body knows what’s right, it just depends if you listen to it”.

Towards the end of last year I did a lot of ignoring when it came to my body. The repercussions were that I became quite ill and had to take a lot of time off work. I guess I needed to go through that experience to realise how important listening to my body is and that my health should never be taken for granted. Even though I am a Personal Trainer and prioritise eating nourishing foods and regular exercise; rest and recovery can often be put to the end of the queue, especially when trying to run your own business and conquer the world, all at the same time. This year I am focussing on listening to my body and Amelia just reaffirmed that.

If your body is screaming at you to take it easy and slow down, then listen to it. If you listen real hard, it might even be telling you to go try out KX Yoga in Malvern…

Just saying.

To check out their timetable click here.

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