Weekend 1: Survived! and We are Nothing!

I survived the first weekend!  Barely.  I am so sore.  Kind of everywhere, but it is localized in a few places: my shoulder, calves, core.  I wish I had a giant body-sized heating pad to use.  Hopefully it will subside after a couple of days.  Saturday was pretty great and really fun and then the tiredness and soreness started to hit Sunday.  I definitely felt a lot less focused due to the soreness and such the second day.  And now today it's just all catching up on me.  I think I'll live, though.

One thing I learned this weekend was how much longer I've been practicing and how much more reading I've already done on this than a lot of the other participants.  I'm definitely trying to not let myself judge - as people have pointed out, well, this is why you go to yoga teacher training, to learn this stuff.  And I have to remember that I'm sure I didn't know all this stuff after only 3 or 4 years of practice.  Anyway, this has led to me sometimes getting over-involved in some of the conversations so I'm trying to balance that with this!  I will just jot down notes while in class and ramble on here so that you, dear reader, can be privy to my all my glorious (or gloriously dumb) insights!  Are't you lucky?  (You know, or you can just stop reading/skip ahead at any time, your call.)

So obviously our first discussion was What is yoga?  The term yoga come from "to yoke" or unite, or union.  So I liked what one person in the class pointed out that it is different from religion because religion is exclusive whereas yoga is inclusive, seeking to create union.  I think that though religion doesn't really seek to exclude people, that is, after all, the end product.  But this seeking to create union and harmony with everything is very evident in Buddhism as well.  The goal in Buddhist meditation is to remove the boundaries of the self to understand that you are one with everything.  So one way this was explained to me in undergrad was that everything is made up of atoms.  Everything.  Really we are all the same stuff.  And going further, the vast majority of any atom is empty space, really.  What is empty space?  Empty space is nothing.  So we are made up of nothing.  As is this laptop I'm typing on and this couch I'm sitting on and that pizza I just ate...and even you!  You are made up of nothing!  How cool is that?  So clearly were are all the same, because we are all nothing.  All of us.  And even your dog and that squirrel and everything.  Everything is nothing.  Sometimes we just need yoga to remind us.

I think I'll leave my ramblings at that for now, but there is more to come.  Stay tuned!

Mission: Yoga Teacher Training

Tomorrow I start yoga teacher training.  I've been wanting to do this for a while now.  So obviously I'm super excited but I'm also kind of nervous.  It's a fairly intense schedule: 12 hours a day, both Saturday and Sunday, every other weekend for the next four months.  Needless to say, I'll likely be hibernating on the off weekends.

The biggest question that's been on my mind all week is which of my awesome yoga leggings to wear on the first day.  Priorities, you guys.  

But before you get all gushy about how I'll make an amazing yoga teacher, I don't know that I'll ever actually teach yoga.  Or that I'll really want to.  I'm just taking the training to learn more and we'll see how it goes.  So wish me luck!

P.S. I may or may not be sleeping in my yoga clothes tonight.

Yoga Day 39

I made it!  I've now done yoga for as many consecutive days as I ran.  Needless to say, this was far less challenging.  And like I've said before, I'm going to keep going.  Though I will probably not be blogging about it daily and I think I will stop counting the days.  I may seek out a new challenge to keep me blogging, though.  We'll see.  As always, questions, comments, suggestions, etc. are welcome.

Yoga Days 36-38

Ok I know I've been slacking on my blogging but I promise that I haven't been slacking on my yoga.  Tuesday, I went to library yoga which was awesome as always.  The teacher has been doing different things since she's come back from her vacation.  Specifically, more binds.  I can certainly do it, it just definitely takes some warming up first, which Priyanka rocks at.  Then yesterday, I did some more restorative stretches before bed which just makes me feel good in general.

And now today.  This morning, I went for a run and took my cell phone with me.  Sometimes I leave it at home, but brought it along today in my sports bra.  However, I hadn't realized how many inches I'd actually lost until my phone came dangerously close to falling out the bottom of my bra.  Clearly, I need some new sports bras.  But on to yoga.  I decided to do a yoga for runners sequence as it seemed apropos for today and it included a couple of basic sun salutations.  Lately, I been trying to work on my chaturanga and I finally had a breakthrough.  So, I can flow through chaturanga but I have thus far been unable to hold it at the bottom.  But, thinking about it the other day, I remembered that I can do crow pose so I have the strength in my arms to support the full weight of the rest of my body, so I must be doing something slightly off with my chaturanga.  After some contemplation and reading and watching and such, I tried something.  I kept my hips a bit higher than I usually do and totally nailed it today!  Not only did I get it, I was like, "Oh yeah, I could definitely hold this for a while."  Epic, you guys.  Epic.

Yoga Day 35

I did a pretty rad post-run yoga sequence today.  I'm finally re-doing the 30-day yoga challenge videos.  Previously, I had been working my way through the ones I had missed but now I am cherry-picking the best ones/the ones I need the most for the day/just generally being picky.  Fun stuff, you guys.

Yoga Day 34

I'm so sore from yesterday's yoga!  In somewhat unique places.  My obliques.  My upper back.  Today I did an all-standing yoga sequence that included lots of chair and warriors.  You know what that means?  Tomorrow I'll be adding glutes to my list of sore body parts.

Yoga Days 32 & 33

So sorry for missing my regular blog post yesterday.  I have no excuse, I just got a bit lazy.  I mean, not so lazy that I missed my actual yoga yesterday, just the blogging about it.  In case you were curious (and let's face it, you're here so you must be at least mildly so), yesterday I did some good restorative yoga - just what I needed after a week with 4 presentations and 2 meetings at work.  Today was library yoga!  You guys know how much I love my yoga at the library.  My teacher challenged us quite a bit today and now I'm a bit sore, but I can't quite remember exactly what move led to such soreness.  Yay mystery soreness!