Getting back in the saddle....or on the mat...

The past 9 months or so have not been a smooth ride. Who am I kidding, there were some serious bumps in the road and some heavy clouds in the sky.

This would be a great moment to bring up Karma and how I always was convinced that things would work out -- well, I would be lying. I tried, as I always do, to look at all the hurdles I was faced with and rationalise that it would be OK.... but my body started to send out different signals. I can confirm that being faced with a situation that has a huge negative impact on me but where I am not in the drivers seat really stresses me out - the yogi way of acceptance... not my cup of tea.

Now that the sky is clearing and the first rays of the sun come down, I'm ready to pick up yoga again.
Over the past months, I didn't practice a lot and defenitely not regularly.
I started doing cardio training on the crosstrainer while listening to pumping rave music - it felt great. 30 minutes me-time, sweating, enjoying the beats.... was that OK for a yogi? Or, was I still a yogi?

I did miss doing yoga. So I started wondering, how do I get back on my yoga mat.
I remembered a tip that my prana yoga flow teacher once gave me. He said that he would never ask his students to do x asanas or spend y time doing yoga -- he just invited them to do one thing every day: roll out your yoga mat, stand on it and take 3 deep breaths. Than, you are free to stop.

In reality, I never stop after the 3 breaths - I find myself doing a sun salutation quickly after that and than start doing some asana's - not a real flow yet, but asana's I feel like doing.

I'm focussing a lot on hip openers now - pigeon pose, lizard, happy baby, squat..... I figured that I need to loosen my hips again to be able to do my bends properly,  with a straight back. In the asana's that I do, I really focus on keeping my back straight....

My plan now is to do cardio training 3 days per week - I turned 40 last year and suddenly my weight started a life of its own.... I need to burn calories..... seriously. Then, 3 days that I want to focus on yoga asana's again..... and 1 day of rest (and I don't mean spending hours in savasana ;-) ).
Sounds OK?

Knocking on 2014's door.

It has been a while since I last posted anything here, I have had a bit of bumpy ride in 2013 with some definite highs and some real lows.... I enjoyed the highs and learned a lot from the lows  so this bumpy ride has helped me to grow as an individual.

And now we have 2014 knocking on the door. I am not a fan of New Year resolutions, so I am not planning on making any. I will just take life as it comes and go with the flow.....

I'm still getting back in touch with yoga after my shoulder injury - the good news is, I am totally shoulder pain free. I went on a yoga weekend beginning of October and thought that that would have been the kick start of doing yoga a few times per week again.... Well,  it wasn't. If I have negative stuff going on in my life, I just can not bring myself to the mat. I did keep up the cardio training as the thirty minutes of sweating, listening to modern beats does free my head and helps to keep me.a bit in shape. 

But now I feel that I am back in a state of mind to pick up yoga again. I will see how it goes....

The joy of cardio

It has been a while- seriously. I don't even want to know when my last post was.

My excuse - actually, I don't need an excuse but in case you are wondering - I've been injured and been too busy at work!

But over time, things change. My injury is going in the right direction - I've been able to do some pain free downward dogs which really made me happy.
At work, a lot changed and created some free time. And now it is holiday season and I have even more time on my hands.... it was now or never for starting up physical exercises.

Two weeks ago, I started working out on my cross trainer - no impact, but a good cardio training.
I used to hate that machine - in most cases started with setting myself the goal of doing 15- 20 mins of training and that's it. But now, I have entered the world of the Ipod. I bought some good "beat" songs online (ITunes store is great) and made my own 'work out' playlist.

The good thing is - it easily keeps me going for 30+ minutes. There is always that difficult part between 1 and 3 minutes to get over, but then.... keep it coming. Great songs, great energy, great workout.....

And working out made me want to do yoga again as well... slowly but surely, I'm getting on my mat more often. It feels good.... if I can stay away from getting injured again, I hope to be able to bring yoga back into my daily/weekly routine.

 

The die is cast - back to the original plan!

The die is cast - after some serious thought, I've taken a decision with regards to the teacher training I was following.

I've decided to continue the training, but only to gain more insight in yoga (back to the original plan) and will no longer do the "teaching stuff".

Why?

There are a number of reasons

1.  I never  had the ambition to become a yoga teacher. I've started this teacher training as a yoga rookie and somehow got caught in the moment and happily joined the teaching part as well. Who was I kidding - there is no way that I could be a credible yoga teacher just by following this training course. A credible teacher needs to be knowledgeable on the asana's but also on the other limbs of yoga. I'm not even convinced that I like the other limbs of yoga .... well, I always said I was in it for the physical part, the asana's and would have a look into the rest.
2. The majority of my fellow students really want to become a yoga teacher - I don't want to take away training/practice time from them "just for the fun of it". The more time they can spend in teaching the group, the better they will get and that will benefit a number of aspiring yogi in the future for sure.
3. I'm still struggling with a shoulder injury - no more sun salutations, no more downward dogs, .... so no more time to really deep dive into the asana's. I've discussed the injury with my doctor and he explained which muscle most likely has suffered some muscle tears. He also told me that it can take a long time for the muscle to heal..... no good news...
4. And recently, I just have difficulties in finding the time and the motivation to practice. Forget the 40 day challenge and then it is incorporated into your life, you can not do without yoga anymore. I think I need to write that magazine a letter that that was crap. Motivation, time and a healthy body, that's what you need to keep daily yoga going if you ask me - if one of these 3 is compromised (or in my case, all 3 of them), forget it.

Anyway - I feel good about my decision - I do feel sorry that now the whole string of asana's needs to be rescheduled because I have decided not to do my part....  but better to take the decision now than to wait for the last minute....

To pee or not to pee

What's up with morning pee?

I've been confronted with the claimed benefits of morning urine a number of times in the past weeks, so I start to wonder how morning pee got promoted from bodily waste to "fluid with benefits"....

I've been reading a book - yoga bitch by Suzanne Morrison . It's a book about her yoga experiences in Bali, and one of the topics she frequently addresses is the fact that yogi drink their morning urine as some sort of ritual. Although she's convinced that she will never do that, severe diarrhea changes everything and out of desparation, she joins the - what she calls - pee-drinkers by taking a sip of her morning urine. Apparently her sickness improved after that.... (coincidence?.... I certainly hope so).

Recently, I've had a discussion on colds and runny noses with some yogis, and the use of a neti to rinse your nose with 10% salty water came up in the discussion. That was topped with a statement that rinsing your nose with morning pee is even better than rinsing with salty water..... please let this one sink in for a while, I needed to do that as well.

And then, even non yogis confronted me with benefits of morning urine. I've got told that people that used to work in the coal mine washed their hands with morning pee as a cure for skin fissures.

Now I am wondering what the mechanism behind all these "strange" usages of urine is. I was hoping to get some insights today in yoga class, but have a shoulder injury so have to skip the teacher training today. Not fun, but the question stays on my list of things to ask next time (end of April).

So if anybody has any good explanation, feel free to comment. I will get back with the explanation I get as soon as I get it....

Next challenge please...

So I'm just starting to feel better after 5 days of fighting a viral bronchitis.... it was the second time since I started writing this yoga blog that I've been down for a few days because of some little creatures messing up my system. I thought yoga was supposed to make me more resistent to all these thing - playing the devil's advocate here - guess an attempt on being a Western yogi is not enought to be granted immunity ;-)

Anyway - I'm still preparing myself for the next class, in a few weeks, where the complete flow will be taught by the students for the first time. So I have to focus on teaching my 2 asana's, but also have to prepare the asana's of the person before and after me, in case they get sick.....

I've decided to let the sanskrit name of the asana for what it is now - I will be teaching the 'extended hand-to-big-toe pose' and the 'tree pose' instead of the 'Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana' and 'Vrikshasana' -- I probably would be okay with the vrikhasana, but I think they should be named in the same language, and I'm not there yet for my first pose....

I'm using the Audio CD to get the instructions memorized properly -- we have an audio CD where our teacher goes through the entire flow with his instructions - so it helps me in doing a weekly entire flow practice (since I can not attend live lessons during the week) and it also helps me to focus specifically on my poses. I don't want to repeat exactly what is on the CD, but it guides me through the different points to focus on when teaching a pose.

For me, the teaching bit is already a challenge - especially as a yoga rookie with no ambition to become a yoga teacher. Nevertheless, I am looking for another challenge for myself.
I've completed my 40-day-challenge successfully and for some reason, setting myself a challenge gives me more of a drive.

I'm now thinking about 'trying to complete 108 sun salutations' or 'a vegetarian week'. And for me, a vegetarian week is also a massive challenge.

Once I have made a final call.... I'll be sure to post it here.

Meanwhile, I will work on getting my poses better - I'm already improving on arm balance poses but still have a long way to go (the journey is very exciting).

Pop quiz - what do you do....?

I would like to bring up what to me seems like a yoga dilemma... perhaps because I'm still a yoga rookie...

Ahimsa, one of the Yama's, tells us to have compassion for all living things. To me, this sounds like do no harm to other living creatures so if your actions cause harm to other... not doing a good job at ahimsa.

But, I consider myself also as a living thing.... so I should not harm myself either, right?

So here's the pop quiz question (sorry for stealing your line Keanu Reeves)...

Pop quiz - your point of view in a certain situation, is hurting another person. But letting go of your point of view and adapting the other person's point of view, is hurting you - what do you do?

Do you have to give in (and probably by calling it like that, it already sounds very un-yogi) and look for a yogi way to accept the other person's point of view? Sounds a lot easier than it is - how much can a person "give in", or go against what feels natural, before you actually are no longer yourself? Or is it all part of an evolution that you should go through when deep diving into yoga? What if you are actually happy with who you are, and you don't want to adopt an other view or evolve into a different person - is that haughty or are you then just not getting the point of yoga.


Maybe I should have stuck to being a Western yogi and stuck to the asana's and let the rest of the yoga limbs be... but somehow, the other limbs are fascinating and trigger me to think and question a lot of things....

So, my ultimate question.... what do you do?