Yoga literally means “to control” or “to unite,” but as I took my first yoga class (I’m discounting a brief dalliance in high school that I had with yoga that I did twice and quit) I felt far from “in control”. At the time, I was beginning my weeklong journey to learn about yoga and Pilates at Ithaca’s Blackbird Studio.

I started last Monday night in a Forrest yoga class with Zach Biegun ’11. Having done no prior research about what Forrest yoga meant, I was apprehensive about what this Forrest referred to. I consulted with a friend of mine who was at the very least more familiar with yoga then me. This provided zero results. I decided going into the yoga class blindly would be more interesting anyway.

Zach Shows Off The Dancer Pose

During the short five-minute drive to Blackbird, which is located next to Tamarind on Route 13, I thought about how my instructor Zach could incorporate the forest into yoga. Perhaps he would play bird chirping in the background or instead of that downward-facing dog I had heard of, it would be something like downward-facing bear.

Zach immediately cleared up my confused head by telling me that Forrest yoga (with two r’s unlike the habitat) is actually a practice started by a yogi (an accomplished practitioner of yoga) named Ana Forrest, who believes in the healing power of yoga.

The healing power of yoga is also of special importance to Zach, who had been an accomplished ballet dancer until an ankle injury destroyed his chance at a serious future in ballet. Fortunately for him, there was yoga to heal his body and spirit.

“When you get physically hurt, parts of your body begin to shield — that shielding doesn’t go away on it’s own, but yoga can help you work it out,” Zach explained.

Zach also advocated the emotional healing ability of yoga.

“People also tend to store emotional trauma in their bodies — it sounds strange, but it’s the same idea as clenching your jaw when you’re stressed out, only more long term. Yoga can help you start to heal that and work that emotional trauma out of your body and your muscles,” he explained.

As I walked into the warm yoga studio I warned Zach I wasn’t particularly flexible or strong. Any strength I had ever had from my former days as a swimmer was long since gone, I have since found that no matter how much time I spend on the Noyes ellipticals, it makes no difference to my upper body.

“Don’t worry,” Zach warned me, “If all people were naturally strong and flexible, we wouldn’t need yoga.”

Sigh.

As the class began, I already felt behind as everyone began doing ujjai breathes — a technique of breathing through the nose — I couldn’t properly master. In fact, Zach warned of us of common mistakes from doing it wrong and I couldn’t even do it wrong correctly.

The girl whose mat was next to met was Kelly Caraher, another instructor at Blackbird. I watched her movements carefully, envious of her ability and intimidated by the ease with which she went from pose to pose. This camaraderie within Blackbird, instructors jumping into classes with each other, makes Blackbird unique — it is very cohesive.

“I feel like the other yoga studios in town are really just a bunch of teachers who all happen to share the same space,” Zach said. “At Blackbird, people go to the studio, all the teachers are good, and we all teach a relatively similar style. We are a community.”

All throughout Zach’s class, we worked on back bends. Seemed harmless enough. We even did a bridge — which I remembered from birthday parties circa age five at gymnastics studios. This pose, known as Wheel, was much harder for me now than it was 16 years ago, but through Zach’s help I began to build strength.

At the end of the 75 minutes, I was exhausted. The room was warm and making me tired. Fortunately, my favorite part of yoga ended the class — Savasana. Laying down with eyes closed, the room filled with a relaxing scent as Zach reminded us that we put this time aside and needed to concentrate on just yoga, not the stresses in our life. I pushed my paper due the next day out of my mind and stopped taking mental notes for this article and just relaxed. I nearly fell asleep.

After the class, I was assured that I would be in major pain tomorrow — a warning that I scoffed off. By Tuesday morning I realized how wrong I was, as all I was craving was a nice, long Swedish massage to soothe by sore muscles.

There was little time to rest, since my weeklong dive into yoga continued with Hot Power Yoga on Wednesday with Kelly. I was petrified of hot yoga due to the plethora of warnings I had accumulated from friends more familiar with yoga than me.

Fortunately the room wasn’t as hot as they usual keep it — leading one yogi, extremely familiar with the hot yoga, to claim it was freezing. My jaw dropped at this as I felt like I was in the middle of a desert.

Kelly’s 90-minute class pushed me. We concentrated mainly on our hearts, something that I rarely think about while working out. I was exhausted and kept trying to focus on the breathing in yoga, known as Pranayama. At the end of a pose, as my strength was depleting, Kelly would have us take a deep breath, and exhale as we transitioned. Despite my lack of faith in this actually making me feel better, it was definitely a necessary portion of yoga.

Kelly was an inspiring teacher. She kept asking the class “why not?” to encourage us to reach further, lift higher or just challenge ourselves. She was right, I was here and had set aside this hour and a half for this yoga class, and it wouldn’t be beneficial for me not to try harder. I took her questioning to heart — perhaps because my chest and heart were so open, as that was the goal of Wednesday’s class.

Friday afternoon was my final class, a private Pilates lesson with Tory Jenis, the owner of Blackbird. While I had an idea of what yoga would be like, Pilates was foreign to me. All I knew is that just about every celebrity swears by it. That was enough for me.

What I didn’t know about Pilates is that it is hyper-concentrated short repetitions of exercises all centered around your core, or stomach. All throughout Pilates one must pull their stomach in to concentrate all the exercises in the middle. For example, a leg exercise has to come from the center of your body where your leg connects.

In a private Pilates class the exercises take place on machines that look as if they could be used to torture people. Instead, they actually make the exercises more fun. Tory and I worked with springs — not letting the springs do the work, but by controlling them as you move with your core. We worked with a “magic circle,” squeezing the circle with legs and arms in various positions, a lot harder than Tory made it look. These props kept Pilates from boring me, something I am all too susceptible to.

After nearly two hours of Pilates, Tory and I had gone over a ton of Pilates exercises, even though I never even broke a sweat, I was wiped out.

I had never given Pilates or yoga much thought. I had become accustomed to just going to the gym when I had the time, never putting aside the time to concentrate on something like I had on Pilates or yoga. When I work out, my head is filled with a million different things. What I liked about Pilates and yoga, however, is that they both are in an environment that fosters concentration on the here and now.