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Going to attempt my first 100-tweet @threadapalooza thread on the topic of yoga! I'm not an expert, this is just a count of an amateur who started yoga 3.5 years ago. 
I'll be focusing on the physical aspects of yoga, not the spiritual side.
I'll be focusing on the physical aspects of yoga, not the spiritual side.
1/ I signed up for my first class in mid-2017 after my break up (yes, it's that very cliched reason) and stuck with it since then. I wasn't dedicated to any form of physical exercise before that.
2/ There are a few basic forms of yoga out there: Hatha (which is slow and grounding), Vinyasa (a more dynamic flow), yin (deep stretching of tissues with poses held for 1-3mins), restorative (healing of injuries, relaxing).
3/ I started off with mostly doing 3-4x a week of restorative yoga to stretch my never-before-stretched muscles and hatha yoga to understand correct alignment of basic postures. Everything felt like a struggle during the initiation.
4/ Consistency is key with yoga. One of my fav instructors said if you plan to do yoga 2x a week, that's as good as doing nothing. Yoga is about stretching, contracting our muscles everyday over and over again.
5/ He also said that yoga is a creating a relationship of awareness with your body at a deep level. You won't gain that awareness unless you do yoga often enough.
6/ When you twist and turn your body in all these shapes and hold them, I was amazed at the kind of sensations different parts of our bodies are capable of feeling.
7/ You feel different sensations as you progress on your journey. I only started feeling the back of my hamstrings at around the 3-year mark. This didn't happen until my calf muscles lost stiffness.
8/ If you ever wonder why advanced practitioners are in your basic level 1 classes, this is why! Their are different levels of sensations and achievements to be unlocked even with basic poses.
9/ What I wish more people told me about yoga is that flexibility comes with strength. If you struggle with forward bends, practice doing chair pose (squats).
10/ People say yoga is "slow and boring". It's not! Nowadays a vinyasa flow class incorporates a lot of dynamic movements taken from dance, pilates, martial arts.
11/ Sun salutations is a full body work out! It's also an excellent way of finding out where you need to improve because they'll be poses which you'll dread doing. Bad at low planks? You know you need to work harder on building shoulder and arm strength.
12/ I dreaded all of the warrior poses because of weak leg muscles and tight hip flexors. But the poses you hate are the ones you need to do more of to get better.
13/ Yoga is extreme multitasking - you have to pay attention to so many things all at once, even in basic postures. Is my pelvic floor lifted? Am I breathing deeply? Am I contracting my core and glutes? Are my shoulders hunched up to my neck? This takes time getting used to
14/ Hamstring muscle tightness exists for everyone, even the most advanced yogis. It's the warm up that helps you ease in to a challenging pose. My forward fold at the start of the class and at the end of the class are remarkably different.
15/ Helpful tip: Don't go in to a deep muscle stretch at the start. You need to treat your body's stiffness like frozen meat that needs thawing first. Warm up your body with other poses that get you sweating first.
16/ Yoga isn't zen while you are doing it. That's a lie that is being sold to you. The zen part is after you've put in the hard work for the day. I love how light my legs feel after a solid class focusing on the legs.
17/ A lil bit of my personal philosophy. Yoga is about seeking balance, flexibility and strength all at the same time. It's how I wish to approach all aspects of my life. Ofcourse, don't forget that your core is at the heart of this! ;)
18/ How do you know you're achieving all of these 3 outcomes of yoga? You'll be able to hold poses for longer and transition through poses much more seamlessly.
19/ My favourite style of yoga is a vinyasa flow. It's dynamic so you aren't holding poses for longer, but it's harder than Hatha yoga even though it may not look like that 
. Like modern dance, the stamina is in how smoothly you transition from one pose to another.
. Like modern dance, the stamina is in how smoothly you transition from one pose to another.
20/ I hope to approach life in the same way I approach my enthusiasm towards teacher-led vinyasa class - the excited anticipation of not knowing what comes next in the flow, but acknowledging it's all a part of the bigger picture in the end.
21/ The funny thing about yoga is that you really can't tell how good someone is at it just by judging their physique.
22/ I tend to get competitive when I see others doing better than me, but this year with COVID, I was on the mat alone in my room reminding me that I'm essentially only competing with my past self and present self.
23/ Everything gets better once the glutes become stronger. The back pains and knee pains (from overextended stretches) disappear.
24/ As a beginner, the most common injuries you'll get are wrist injuries and knee injuries. Wrist injuries happen cause our legs, core and glutes aren't strong enough, so we dump weight on our hands in a lot of the poses.
25/ The second most common injury as a beginner is knee pain. This happens because the hamstrings, inner thigh muscles aren't strong enough so you dump your weight on the knees + tend to overextend the back of knees during stretches.
26/ Yoga is doing the same poses over and over again. People keep doing it because they are striving for better alignment.
27/ When you do yoga frequently enough, you'll gain a sense of awareness that both sides of your body have different blockages. One side will always be stronger or more flexible. Alignment aims to fix those differences over time.
28/ Purists may scoff at the use of props, but trust me, yoga blocks and a strap are very useful and you should invest in them if you're a beginner!
29/ The Instagrammification of yoga makes it look like everyone is doing unbelievably impressive poses, so easily. The reality is that level of achievement can take up to a decade or longer of consistent practice.
30/ One of my favourite instructors also said that you may never be able to certain poses like full splits in this lifetime, because each of our bodies are different. And you just have to accept that :)
31/ Hypermobility in yoga means some people are going to be naturally bendier and can do certain poses with much more ease than you ever will be able to. This is why it is futile to be too fixated with your flexibility.
32/ So if flexibility is just about gaining strength first, shouldn't I just be getting stronger in the gym instead? Yes and no. Yoga is a delicate combination of gaining flexibility and strength together w/ balance. If you just did squats, you'll end up with tight calf muscles.
33/ The balance is that gain flexibility over time through stretching (muscle lengthening) and muscle strengthening (through contraction and body weight resistance). You can read about this here:
https://newangleyoga.com/what-muscles-work-in-yoga/
https://newangleyoga.com/what-muscles-work-in-yoga/
34/ That said, with over 3 years of experience, I find that yoga isn't always enough for muscle strengthening fast enough. I do some weight training for arms in addition to yoga. If you keep doing yoga along with this, you'll avoid getting stiff muscles.
35/ Other limitations of yoga: Not enough poses for strengthening the inner thigh muscles, so I practice some pilates/barre separately. Anyone else have helpful tips on this? My cossack squats are a disaster.
36/ Yoga isn't going to meet your daily cardio needs even if you do a non-stop sun salutations flow.
37/ Hot yoga - so many people tend to swear by it because it accelerates weight loss. A note of caution is that hot yoga makes you incorrectly believe that you are more flexible than you really are and you could injure yourself.
38/ I can't stand the high temperatures, so I never do hot yoga. But I find it is unhelpful in understanding which parts of my body are genuinely stiff because your body feels unnaturally flexible during a hot class.
39/ Yoga is all about breathing correctly. You have to be inhaling and exhaling slowly and deeply throughout your practice. An instructor once said that tortoises have much longer lifespans than rabbits because they breathe deeply and slowly. Look it up!
