Yoga has been around for hundreds if not thousands of years. Throughout this time it has changed bit by bit. One yogi that is taking Brooklyn by storm, is Saskia Thode. She has helped to create, if not found, heavy metal yoga. It is a relatively new form of yoga that relieve stress in a different way.
Saskia Thode
Saskia Thode found yoga at eighteen years old. She had just been in a car accident that caused back and neck pain, panic attacks, difficulty moving, anxiety, and other issues. To help her back and movement improve, she was encouraged to do yoga. With this she also started meditating and that helped her to be able to cope with her anxiety and panic attacks.
In 2006 Thode moved to New York City. Thode grew up listening to heavy metal music, so she decided to combine the two. After she completed her initial 200 hour vinyasa yoga teacher training, she began teaching her metal yoga class in 2014. While she was in training
Thode is trained in many different forms of yoga. In addition to vinyasa, she is also trained in Indian yoga, the fourth way, therapeutic yoga, chair yoga, and is a Reiki practitioner in the second degree.
What does a Session of Heavy Metal Yoga look Like?
Now, you may be wondering, what does a heavy metal yoga class look like? Imagine you walk into a room with dim lights, instead of the obnoxious sounds of Brooklyn traffic, there is metal music playing. Thode is at the front of the classroom, her long blonde hair is pulled into long braid, clad in dark leggings and a tank top. Her tattoos sneak halfway down her arm. Once class starts, the volume of the music turns up and everybody makes their way to their mats. Thode promts you and the other classmates to scream, yell, run in place, pound the floor, destroy an imaginary guitar, and much more. You feel you anger, stress, and life worries melt away.
My Experience
Hopefully you will take a moment to think about trying heavy metal or some other less common type of yoga. In a yoga class I was taking, our teacher had a day when she led us in a session of metal yoga. We were encouraged to wear all black and our teacher even let us each wear one of her prized band shirts. It was one of my favorite subtypes of yoga that we tried.
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