Sunday, March 17, 2013
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Monday, January 16, 2012
... Why I do yoga
#AGREE RT @gayler1: Daily Fitness Tip: Exercise is medicine for a change in a persons physical, emotional, & mental condition.
sent via UberSocial for BlackBerry
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Type A personalities and uh, yoga
Uh, Namaste? Not pleased with association of yoga & elitism. So many conflicts here. In many ways $LULU is a strange company. But dammit if they don't make the best anti-muffin waistband leggings.
From: @nytimesbusiness
Sent: Nov 28, 2011 12:20a
Combines Ayn Rand and Yoga http://t.co/h0BasQdR
sent via The New York Times
The wheels start to fall off
I've been studying intensively for a professional exam for the past six weeks, and due to schedule demands I have scrapped my yoga schedule completely. Boy is that a mistake.
The first thing to go was serenity. Studying yoga 2-4 times a week does not make me entirely serene by a long shot. But it does make coworkers less annoying. It makes me see the potential in humanity instead of its blinding flaws. It makes the news in the paper seem less bad, and it changes my focus to understand people with more compassion.
That last one is important for living in New York.
The second thing to go was untroubled sleep. Yoga focuses on rhythms of life, waking, working, ending. Every practice has a cycle of generating heat, cooling, restoring, and resting. Without these ebs and flows, my own cycles are engineered by chaos. Caffeine, work, and all-nighters that go on til I drop are the driving forces. And the quality of my study time has decreased. My mind wanders, I am bored, I find myself drifting from the schedule and missing benchmarks.
#3 surprised me. Just 1.5 months after discontinuing my yoga schedule, my body feels terrible. I have aches and pains in my back. I can feel tightness resulting from lazy posture. Both of my wrists are stiff and one of them has developed a cyst near the joint. Suddenly I'm having symptoms of carpal tunnel and tennis elbow with no increase in handwriting or computer use. Frankly I feel like I've aged 10 years.
The worst part is that I have not accomplished the goal that I wanted to with this temporary regimen change: I am more tired, more moody, and feel more restricted by my physical body then ever before.
I now realize the importance of finding your own rhythm and sticking to it. I used to think that practicing 4 times a week, while working full time and studying was out of the question. I am now definitely considering committing to that schedule permanently.
The exam is December 3rd...I think I will sign up for a class that afternoon.
The first thing to go was serenity. Studying yoga 2-4 times a week does not make me entirely serene by a long shot. But it does make coworkers less annoying. It makes me see the potential in humanity instead of its blinding flaws. It makes the news in the paper seem less bad, and it changes my focus to understand people with more compassion.
That last one is important for living in New York.
The second thing to go was untroubled sleep. Yoga focuses on rhythms of life, waking, working, ending. Every practice has a cycle of generating heat, cooling, restoring, and resting. Without these ebs and flows, my own cycles are engineered by chaos. Caffeine, work, and all-nighters that go on til I drop are the driving forces. And the quality of my study time has decreased. My mind wanders, I am bored, I find myself drifting from the schedule and missing benchmarks.
#3 surprised me. Just 1.5 months after discontinuing my yoga schedule, my body feels terrible. I have aches and pains in my back. I can feel tightness resulting from lazy posture. Both of my wrists are stiff and one of them has developed a cyst near the joint. Suddenly I'm having symptoms of carpal tunnel and tennis elbow with no increase in handwriting or computer use. Frankly I feel like I've aged 10 years.
The worst part is that I have not accomplished the goal that I wanted to with this temporary regimen change: I am more tired, more moody, and feel more restricted by my physical body then ever before.
I now realize the importance of finding your own rhythm and sticking to it. I used to think that practicing 4 times a week, while working full time and studying was out of the question. I am now definitely considering committing to that schedule permanently.
The exam is December 3rd...I think I will sign up for a class that afternoon.
Monday, October 31, 2011
God is the sweat running down your back
There's a PJ Harvey lyric that goes something like this: "God is the sweat running down his back." Tonight, in hot power vinyasa class, I finally got that notion. Overall, I was super focused today, despite not getting a lot of sleep and indulging in a little Halloween candy instead of lunch. The instructor paced everything just right. I felt focused and strong.
Doing a crescent lunge with mini backbend, something in me connected to a larger energy. I felt the element of worship stronger than I ever have in yoga class before. Worship of... the universal, the grand design, whatever you want to call it. Looking up past my fingertips, I felt sweat run down my back (and off the end of my nose, and down my arms, and down my chest, etc) and for one divine moment, it all connected: feet to earth, muscle to bone, arms to sky, heart to stars.
Doing a crescent lunge with mini backbend, something in me connected to a larger energy. I felt the element of worship stronger than I ever have in yoga class before. Worship of... the universal, the grand design, whatever you want to call it. Looking up past my fingertips, I felt sweat run down my back (and off the end of my nose, and down my arms, and down my chest, etc) and for one divine moment, it all connected: feet to earth, muscle to bone, arms to sky, heart to stars.
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