Yoga in Berlin: Chimosa ~ Yoga, Tea, Fitness
Today was the day! I started my 30 day membership with a very cool project called “Urbansportsclub” in Berlin. They offer a fitness flatrate in different sizes. I got size M, which allows me to attend classes in a variety of yoga, Pilates, and other fitness studios, beach volleyball, bootcamp classes, zumba, and much more all over Berlin. This is MY chance to explore the city more and to find some awesome YOGA places and meet people. 🙂
Today, I started with a 90 minute Jivamukti yoga class at CHIMOSA in Berlin Mitte/central Berlin. It’s a relatively small studio but beautifully decorated and set up. I particularly liked the wall painting in the room of our yoga class. The class was in English (YES, I was so pleased! 🙂 ) but they have German classes as well. Hülya, the yoga instructor, had a great British accent and calm voice.
I have to admit that I felt a little off at the beginning of the class when we started with a pretty long breathing exercise, including making noises while we exhaled and closed our hands in our heart center.
As you might know, I am not too big into the whole side of yoga when it comes to going on a journey with sound or holding hands with each other. Don’t get me wrong, I am not judging it, it’s just simply not for me.
The reason why I practice yoga, is to feel my body, to open up my heart (chest), to stretch, to calm down, to get a hold of my breath and to be more mindful. Hülya said something when we were going through the poses, something that really stuck with me:
“Don’t hold your breath. Yoga is not a race of poses. Yoga is about breathing. If you don’t breathe you’re not doing yoga, you’re only doing gymnastics.”
I absolutely loved this! It’s so very, very true! I am guilty as charged! Sometimes I catch myself doing yoga at home after work, still being in the “work mode,” rushing through the poses in my head and forgetting to really do the poses according to my breathing and not the other way around! So, yes, this was a nice reminder and eye opener for me today.
Another amazing thing happened during the class. You might have heard (or experienced yourself) that the yoga practice can trigger or release emotions that you’ve might have held back or avoided for a while. Particularly backbends and heart/chest openers can be very effective for that. Today, it happened to me. I was FINALLY able to do, or I should better say, I LET myself do a full wheel pose (“Urdhva Dhanurasana”). I “just” put each hand next to my ears and pressed myself all the way up.
It felt amazing, yet scary, yet relieving and liberating. Like I just opened my heart and released emotions that I’ve been successfully hidden and locked up in my heart.
I believe that this could be a reason why I was sometimes not able to really deeply inhale. When I came back down on the floor again, I noticed that a tear rolled down my face, I couldn’t help but smile and even giggle a little bit. I know, you might think “uhm….ok..weird.” but no, it was really not. It felt like I just conquered my own sad emotions and finally let go of them. A-mazing!
Well, suffice to say, I will go again and keep trying and working on opening up, forgiving, and letting go. I think I’ve been holding in way too much.
Can you relate? We all have things we just decide not to deal with because they are too painful or just not comfortable to talk about. That’s totally okay. I think yoga is a great way to release emotions without dissecting them into bits and pieces.
Conclusion: if you live in Berlin or plan to visit, try Chimosa. They have different classes and many of them allow walk-ins.
I’ll go back there and also try out more studios around me with my cool flat rate, thanks to UrbanSportsClub, and keep you posted 🙂
Stay yogilated 🙂
Warmly,
Karen