Today I did the second twenty minute section of Yoga Zone’s Total Body Conditioning DVD.
I knew that since I was already physically sore and tired from dealing with the irrigation (see the blogcomic for today) that I might have trouble with some of the poses, and if I hadn’t set myself up to feel accountable to y’all yesterday, I would have oh-so-easily used my pre-existing exhaustion as a valid excuse to not do yoga. But hooray I did yoga anyway!
What I’m finding right now I’m best at in trying to follow these routines is screaming ‘FUCK YOU!!!‘ at the people on the screen. I was doing it perhaps a little more yesterday than today, but it was still there, and perhaps the thing I was most successful at. Something about how I use (or don’t use) my legs has made all the muscles/tendons down the backs of my legs (hamstrings?) ‘too short’… Too short to really even attempt a downward dog without intense feelings of pain, sure, but even when they begin the session by trying to get me to sit up straight with my legs straight out in front of me and my spine straight and extended I find that I can either have my spine straight and vertical OR I can have my legs straight out in front of me… like all the connective tissues down the backside of my body are too short and when one half of me straightens out the other half folds up. So they explain what wonders sitting up straight with my legs straight in front of me will do for my breathing and I mutter ‘fuck you‘ back at them as I struggle to perhaps keep my legs and my spine straight by bending backwards 30 or more degrees at the hips.
They move on to other positions, and I keep finding myself unable to sit up vertically and have my spine straight at the same time in them without effort and strain… except they seem to think that this sitting up thing is the easy, resting part of the position and proceed to begin bending at the hips (keeping their spine straight as can be) and bringing their foreheads down to their legs or the ground or whatever. If I’m not looking at them, just trying to follow directions, I feel the strain in the places they say I’m supposed to be working and I use my breathing to move as deep into the pose as I can and then when I look up and see them bent full in half and look down and see I’ve just managed to get barely into that ‘sitting straight up’ thing they started at and they get a bigger ‘Fuck You.
And then towards the end of today’s routine they went from a plank pose (I can do that! My backside tissues are certainly long enough that I can have my entire body in a straight line!) to downward dog (I can sorta do that one, though I certainly can’t move fully into that pose and direct most of my attention towards just not doing it wrong and hurting myself…). Which would be fine, but they want me to go back and forth on each exhale and inhale respectively, what seemed like a ridiculous number of times. I mean, I could have reasonably held in the plank pose twice as long, or maybe in the downward dog pose 2/3 as long, but going back and forth and for as long as they did … man. I collapsed before they finished into child’s pose to give myself a rest before they moved on. Then they asked me to move from plank pose into being on hands and knees, so I jumped up onto all fours… and they moved into child’s pose. Which was fine. Then corpse pose, and then the closing, and then credits, and I didn’t move from corpse pose until the credits ran out.
Okay, that’s that. I’m going to upload the blogcomic I did before I started yoga now.
Maybe I’ll fuss about Yoga more tomorrow!
Don’t force it, “Wait until your body lets you in.” as my favorite Yoga (on my video) tells me. I find that I don’t get the same benefits from Yoga if I force myself into a pose when my body isn’t ready for it. I try to remember this statement in life too, although I’m not too good at that.
I am really glad that you are doing it again though. Maybe when my toe heals…
Don’t force it, “Wait until your body lets you in.” as my favorite Yoga (on my video) tells me. I find that I don’t get the same benefits from Yoga if I force myself into a pose when my body isn’t ready for it. I try to remember this statement in life too, although I’m not too good at that.
I am really glad that you are doing it again though. Maybe when my toe heals…
You should order the Yoga Deck (yes, that’s what it’s called) from Barnes and Noble. I started on that and found it’s a lot easier to read the poses in front of me, with directions, pictures, and helpful information about the poses benefits than watch the videos.
It’s like $15. It also comes with a little pamplet that tells you what specific poses you can put together to reach your desired outcome, remove back pain, lose weight, find inner peace (or something alone those lines). It has breathing cards telling you about different breathing excercises, some stuff about meditation, and of course the full yoga deck.
You should order the Yoga Deck (yes, that’s what it’s called) from Barnes and Noble. I started on that and found it’s a lot easier to read the poses in front of me, with directions, pictures, and helpful information about the poses benefits than watch the videos.
It’s like $15. It also comes with a little pamplet that tells you what specific poses you can put together to reach your desired outcome, remove back pain, lose weight, find inner peace (or something alone those lines). It has breathing cards telling you about different breathing excercises, some stuff about meditation, and of course the full yoga deck.
I want the “Iraq Most Wanted” Yoga Deck.
Wait, did I say “want”? I meant “would laugh at”.
I want the “Iraq Most Wanted” Yoga Deck.
Wait, did I say “want”? I meant “would laugh at”.