Needless to say, the yoga I’ve been practicing this last month has been very gentle.  I’ve been doing only recuperative poses, sometimes only one or two a day.  I’ve focused a lot on breathing, which helped tremendously when trying to cope with bronchitis, and I’ve been meditating (particularly on the nature of change — I won’t always be sick!).  I think I’ve finally turned the corner and hopefully I’ll be able to start posting more regularly.

In the meantime, here’s a video post from Sadie Nardini that I just loved.  She uses a popular song (Bon Jovi’s Living on a Prayer) as the foundation for chanting in her classes.  Easily accessible and when I tried it this month with my croaky frog voice it really did make me smile.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.