Yoga In Sydney a very general overview (my personal British perspective)
Yoga is massive in Sydney,
Some of the classes I’ve attended were 60 strong. Huge classes by most yoga studio standards in my experience. Not all, of course, there are plenty of smaller studios as well, but I chose to attend the more popular larger studios.
Some of these studios have up to 13 classes per day and from what I’ve seen almost every class packed with keen excited yogini’s (mainly !) and yogi’s time and time again. Its big business. Some studios also have health food restaurants.
Heated studios
Well even though it’s hot enough here the Australians like their hot yoga! And many classes are in heated rooms.
I don’t want to name any particular studios or area’s in this blog it’s just a general take on my experience as a keen yoga enthusiast of my personal experiences in Sydney
Personally I find it hard to breath correctly in a heated room with 60 other people crammed in like sardines, it feels like there is not enough oxygen in the room, and I cannot regulate my breath through my nose properly. I end up desperately gasping for breath through my mouth and even just giving up ! But thats just me. The popularity of these classes proves that !
Its certainly a way of speeding up the process of detoxification and losing water weight very quickly! However I’m rarely finding myself in these classes with my breath and sympathetic nervous system under control the way I would like it.
BUT I like that it’s challenging me, and therefore transforming, rather than just me staying with the same old postures and hold length I’ve become comfortable with and stagnating.
This brings me to the general style of classes I’ve seen. Ive been to many classes here and there are indeed many types of yoga available. Every style is here somewhere if you look for it, but I would say there are basically two main popular styles of yoga here . Vinyasa and Yin. (With some Iyengar overlooking)
This is a huge generalisation ! but I need to get my point across about the yoga scene here in comparison with my experience elsewhere. Also, and as much as I can see that the teachers are trying their best to encourage the understanding of meditation, the vast majority of people are doing what I would describe as yoga athletics, and are primarily, if not totally, concerned with their bodys.
Thats fine, as anyone who does yoga often enough, will eventually come round to the meditation aspect. It becomes increasingly obvious that the practice helps to calm and focus the mind, the more you do it.
There are however some “modern” yoga schools where im not sure they are focusing on this subject enough … for example they will ‘say’ that savasana is the most important posture. But then they make it last two minutes and have music playing during it.
Or worse they start singing !!! ?
