“If my people …shall humble themselves and pray….then will I hear from heaven…”

2 Chronicles 7:14

Being tough is in my DNA. From high school football offensive guard, to riding horseback with my Dad through treacherous mountains in blinding snow … I’m, well, tough.

I’ve certainly never been a Yoga person …. that is until my wife, Corinne, announced, “Brock, I think you should try Hot Yoga. It’s a great stress reliever.”

Obedient husband that I am, I reluctantly signed up for a lesson.

It was humiliating.

The studio is kept at over 90 degrees, and I felt like a discombobulated lumberjack stumbling through the poses while the much leaner and definitely more limber ladies and very few guys, stretched athletically around me.

The pain of the Yoga position, ‘downward dog’ was for me, downright excruciating, as the instructor fairly sang, “doesn’t this feel wonderful?” In lieu of strangling her in the middle of the class I resorted to prayer, “Please God, help me get through this”!

Maybe it was my stubbornness, or simply the pride of surviving that first session that took me back, but Hot Yoga was soon a part of my early morning routine.

And over time, the benefits surprised me.  That first prayer, muttered out of sheer pain, opened up a new and much needed dialogue with God, and Yoga somehow became an unexpected prayer time for me. Not only was I less stressed, I was growing closer to God.

“How was yoga this morning, Brock?” Corinne smiles as I walk in the door drenched in sweat.

I smile back, “Incredible,” I answer.

Prayer

Isaiah 55:6 KJV
Psalms 55:17