Days 25-28 — Resting Up

I was feeling sort of icky today, so I did the Evening Relaxation practice from Yoga Journal.  Lots of forward bends and an emphasis on letting the body release instead of pushing yourself.  It reminded me a lot of the forward bend sequence I did last night from Rodney Yee’s AM Yoga for Your Week DVD.  Both are nice practices for the end of the day.

Days 21-24 — Back in the Saddle

I was feeling un-motivated to do yoga today, so I tried to procrastinate with some bad Sunday afternoon television.  Unfortunately (or fortunately), the cable was out.  Taking that as the universe telling me to get off my butt, I put in the Insight Yoga with Sarah Powers DVD and did her yin kidney practice.

This is a great practice focusing on the kidney/bladder/urinary tract meridians.  My favorite pose today was saddle pose, basically the yin version of reclining hero’s pose.  Apparently my quadriceps really needed the stretch and I could feel my whole torso opening up.

In this practice, Sarah talks a lot about the suffering of suffering and that lesson seems particularly appropriate this week.  I think I’ve been spending a lot of time recently bemoaning the state of my health instead of focusing on the present and what I need to do to take care of myself.  Easier said than done, but that’s why they call it a practice!

Days 17-20– First Real Challenge

The past few days I’ve been going along my merry way, yoga-ing and feeling really good about my practice.  Being consistent hasn’t been as difficult as I thought it would be, doing yoga feels great, and I can feel positive changes in my body already.  Unfortunately, today I had my first challenging day — an ulcerative colitis flare-up.  Crap.

I didn’t feel exhausted or sick like I sometimes can, I just didn’t feel right, and I wasn’t sure whether doing yoga would calm things down or shake things up.  The thing is, I wanted to do yoga.  I felt like I would miss it if I didn’t practice.  I ended up doing a 25 minute Forward Bend practice from Rodney Yee, super relaxing, and  I feel mentally better.  Hopefully tomorrow things will settle down physically, too.  I am happy, though, that yoga has become a part of my life even when UC gets in the way.

Days 15 and 16/365 — “If Yoga Was a Person”

The other day I was wasting time online and came across an interview given by Gabourey Sidibe, the actress who played the title character in the movie “Precious”.  Sidibe was quoted as saying “I hate yoga so much. Like, if yoga was a person, I’d stab them.” I have to admit, I was sort of shocked.  I’ve known yoga to stir up angry feelings (in fact, I’ve talked about it in this blog), but the extent of Sidibe’s hatred was surprising.

Obviously, I enjoy yoga and consider it important enough to my well-being to try to do it every day, but I didn’t always feel that way.  My first experience with yoga was in a college phys ed class.  I was taking a semester of Aerobics and, to my surprise, the syllabus included a week of yoga.  I thought it was boring.  Why would I ever need to spend an hour doing stretches?  The best part was the five minutes of corpse pose (aka nap time) at the end of class when the instructor turned the lights off.  When yoga week was done, I would have described yoga as dull, but I certainly couldn’t have mustered up the kind of vitriol for the practice that Sidibe feels.

So why would yoga inspire so much hatred?  Sidibe goes on to say “it doesn’t make any sense to kill yourself, because who are you trying to be beautiful for? It’s a mind game, not a body game” which makes me wonder if she’s missed the point.  Yoga is about the mind as much as the body.  One of the main reasons I decided to try maintaining a daily practice is because I know my mind feels calmer and less cloudy when I do yoga.  And I know I’m nicer to be around, too.  Once of my favorite yogis, Eoin Finn, says that when we practice yoga, it’s the people in our lives who benefit the most.  I wholeheartedly agree.

For the update on my daily practice… Yesterday I did the Standing Pose sequence from Rodney Yee’s AM Yoga for Your Week DVD and today I did Heart-Air from Shiva Rea’s Daily Energy DVD.  I can feel my flexibility increasing, my calves loosening up, and my arms feeling stronger.  Since I’ve been doing shorter sessions I didn’t expect to notice much of a difference this soon, but I’m pleasantly surprised at what a consistent practice can do.

Day 14/365 — New DVD

I did it; I caved and bought a new yoga DVD.  A.M. Yoga for your week with Rodney Yee is a series of 5 short, targeted sequences.  Tonight I did the forward bend sequence and finished feeling completely relaxed.  Despite the name of the DVD, I would hesitate to do the forward bend practice in the A.M. for fear that I’d fall asleep on the floor afterward.  As Rodney says, because forward bends open up the entire back body, the level of relaxation achieved is deeper.

My first yoga DVD back in the day was by Rodney Yee, but I think it’s been years since I’ve done one of his practices.  Doing this DVD reminded me of how clear and helpful his cues are.  I found myself getting deeper into poses and making connections I hadn’t made before.  I’m looking forward to exploring the rest of the practices and maybe revisiting some of my old Rodney DVDs.

Day 13/365

My thoughts go out to everyone affected by the earthquake in Haiti.  If you’re looking for ways to help, NPR has put together a good list.  Tragedy like this is a reminder that the only certainty is that life can change at any moment.

In my little corner of the world, I did the Shanti sequence from Shiva Rea’s Daily Energy Vinyasa Flow Yoga.  It’s a relaxing practice featuring lots of slow stretches.  I laugh a little when she gets to the “sacred rolling” section — basically rolling from side to side.  Is sacred rolling an actual thing or is Shiva making that up?  Regardless, I finished the practice extra relaxed and thankful for a little peace in my day.

Day 12/365 — An Automatic Smile

Today I did the Honey Routine, one of Eoin Finn’s free podcasts .  I really enjoy these podcasts because (a) they’re free, (b) you can put them on your mp3 player and take them with you when you travel, and (c) Eoin is actually doing the routine along with you, as evidenced by his shaky voice during “three little push ups” and his stuffy nose during inversions.

The Honey Routine includes a few balancing poses — crow pose (my nemesis), twisting warrior, tree pose, etc — and as it happens, I fell over a few times.  The weird thing was that every time I fell over I smiled.  Not an embarrassed-to-have-fallen smile, but a big, genuine, goofy grin.  Why?  Shouldn’t I have been smiling during the poses I  was actually able to do?  What made me smile every time I came close to face planting?

When I’m going about my daily tasks and I make a mistake or things don’t turn out as expected, I don’t smile.  I don’t laugh, in fact I’m sure I usually frown.  If there’s anything I take away from my yoga practice, I want it to be that automatic smile.  Because after I smile, I go right back into the pose, ready to fall again.  I don’t spend time thinking about what a problem it was that I fell.  I take it as an opportunity to try again and do better.   Maybe someday my life off the mat will be just as positive.

Days 10 and 11/365 — Quickies

Although I didn’t write yesterday, I did do yoga — The Quickie from Eoin Finn’s Power Yoga for Happiness DVD.  In the past, doing short routines felt a little like cheating.  I had this idea that if you weren’t practicing for at least an hour then it didn’t really count.  But a lot of days, carving out an hour feels like a daunting task, let alone finding the energy to do a vigorous vinyasa practice.  No more!  I’m finding that I’m just as happy practicing for 30 minutes every day and fitting in longer practices as I’m able.

Today I did the Chakra practice from Shiva Rea’s Daily Energy DVD.  In light of my new found desire for shorter practices, I’ve been turning to this DVD a lot recently.  All of the routines are 20 minutes long and you can add on 5 minute meditations, short core or forward bend segments and/or savasana.  I’ve been trying to find other DVDs with similar concepts (short but satisfying practices) so if anyone has suggestions they’d be much appreciated.  I’ve been eyeing Rodney Yee’s A.M. Yoga for the Week DVD.

It was an exhausting day at work today, so after yoga I celebrated by splitting a piece of lemon poppy seed cake with my husband.  Delish!

Day 9/365 — Yin Yoga

I decided to do the Yin Liver practice from the Insight Yoga with Sarah Powers DVD.  It’s an hour long Yin yoga routine focused on the liver/gallbladder meridians and featuring wide legged child’s pose, a gentle backbend, some twists, and lots of external hip rotations.  On the outside it’s a quiet looking practice, but once I get into the third or fourth minute of pigeon it feels like a lot of work to stay calm.

In the Insight Yoga DVD, Sarah talks about how the liver is associated with the emotion of anger and to be on the lookout for feelings that come up during the practice, particularly the strong hip oriented postures like pigeon.

A few years ago, my husband and I took some yoga classes together.  Oftentimes, we would get to the hip opening postures and they would stir up feelings of anger in him, to the extent that he’d sometimes leave class early to avoid them.  I always attributed his frustration to his lack of flexibility, but now I wonder if he may actually have been experiencing a release of liver energy.  Even though it sounds a little “out there” to me, his reaction to the liver/gallbladder poses was so consistent that maybe there’s something to it.

Day 8/365 — Wrist Rest

A lot of the practices I’ve been doing lately have been heavy on the sun salutations.  Combine that with long days on the computer and my wrists and forearms were asking for forgiveness.  I started with the Solar Meditation from Shiva Rea’s Daily Energy DVD as a warm up and then I put together an up dog/downdog/chatarunga-less practice pieced together from past classes.  The basic flow was:

1.  Mountain Pose to yogic squat to standing forward bend.

2. Standing splits (right side), right leg back to runner’s stretch, arms up.

3.  Twist to the left, left arm reaching behind, right arm reaching in front.  Back to forward.

4. Transition to Warrior two, then side angle, then to crescent, then to triangle.

5. From triangle, move into forward bend over the front (left) leg.  Standing splits, right leg up.

6. Standing forward bend to mountain pose.  Repeat on the other side.

I played Portishead in the background, had some candles burning, and finished off with some hand and wrist stretching and savasana.  And now my husband just got home with Star Pizza.  What a great Friday!