It has been a while, again, since I last wrote anything here. On my road to fitness and healthy living I have, yes, started doing yoga. And fallen absolutely in love with it. I have done some at home yoga videos in the past, back in the dark times of teenager-hood, and always felt a kind of kinship with the stretch and pull of yoga asanas, but never really connected with it. I was a swimmer (I still am, and always will be) and that meant that the pool was my home. I always felt that I was not truly alive unless I was swimming, and while yoga or pilates was a great way to stretch and lengthen, it was never really a lifestyle or fitness routine that I took to. Now, some ten years later, along comes my friend A, who has introduced me to so many things and people, not limited to our shared friend family and alcohol, but also to Erin Motz's 30-Day Yoga Challenge.
Erin Motz calls herself a Bad Yogi because she'll eat the occasional burger and isn't pretentious or focused too much on Sanskrit or instagramming difficult poses. How she describes the Bad Yogi philosophy:
Bad YogiTM [baad yogee]
1
a renegade yogi who indulges in the occasional burger, has never been
to a shakti dance class, and admits to not always knowing their asana
from their elbow.
I'm on day 6 (just finished my practice for the day!) of the challenge and I can already feel the difference. Besides noticing an ability to stretch more and improved posture, I feel an awareness of my body and my self that I did not have before yoga. It is really well described in this article: 8 Signs That You're Going Through a Transformation. I really feel like a new part of my life is opening up. I find myself making healthier choices. I walked past the giant bag of M&M's at the office all week, and I only had a small handful twice. Maybe 20 candies in all, and in the past I would have polished off so much of that bag it would have been unbelievable. I did have ginger snaps from Trader Joe's that a friend brought me back, but they were pretty healthy, and I could only eat a few at a time because they were super gingery. Delicious though. But I just did not want super unhealthy things. Don't get me wrong, there were a couple of days that I ate more than I should, and one day I totally had a caramel Coolatta from Dunkin' Donuts, but I'm only human and I needed caffeine on a long day.
Speaking of caffeine, I think yoga is even helping regulate my sleep and energy levels. There is all sorts of research that I have been reading about that says that yoga helps balance cortisol levels and other things to do with blood pressure and sleep and calmness, and I can say, even in just a week, I can absolutely feel it. I would be interested to take my blood pressure and see if it's down any. I have not lost any weight that I know of, but it is still early days, and I only did a few days of swimming this week. I think maybe three days, so not as much calorie burning.
I'm using my old pink flowered yoga mat from when I was younger, and boy has it seen better days. Our cat decided many years ago that the yoga mat was an excellent scratching post, so it tends to shed little bits of itself every time I unroll and roll it up. It also has been used for a week, and I realized that I have sweated and stood and laid on it, and it's kind of not as clean as I would like it to be. So I looked up how to clean a yoga mat, and found a whole bunch of recipes for yoga mat cleaners. I read Delightfully Tacky on a regular basis, and I love everything she does, so when I noticed that she had a yoga mat cleaner recipe, I knew that was the one that I was going to have to try. So when I was at the Mart of Wal I purchased two little spray bottles in the travel section (one's pink and one's blue, yay pretty colors!) and some witch hazel. I filled the bottles about 2/3 of the way with distilled water (because we have well water and it can make things smell funny because of its high iron content) and then the rest of the way with the witch hazel. I then put a few drops of tea tree oil in each bottle, and then in one bottle a few drops of lavender oil and in the other bottle I put a few drops of peppermint oil. I'll experiment and see which combo I like the best. They both smell pretty good!
In the Land of Knitting, I have been making progress, although I do not have any pictures of that progress, sadly. I am almost done with the green cotton tank from the Spring edition of Knitscene. It's the Amazonite tank, and I really like the pattern.
My version is a lime green cotton and viscose yarn (Shine sport from Knitpicks a few years ago) and I think I might have made it a little too wide, I'm not a small girl, but I think I might have had a moment of body image issues when I worked out which size to make. Or I was whupped by the gauge goddess, which is always a possibility.
I have also been working on a pair of socks for me, and one for my mother. Her's are black, with some wool and silk I purchased from KnitPicks a month or so back. I like it, and I've made her a pair in this wool before, and she liked them. I put ribbing all the way down this time, to make them a little bit different. Also, they're a little bit bigger, so hopefully they will fit her better. The socks that I am making for myself are sort of a heathery and striped affair. I really like them.
Work is going excellently. The firm hired two new attorneys, which meant an expansion into the office next door, which meant that I was able to move from the main reception area into the office abandoned by one of the attorneys. It's a little closet of an office, but it's my very own until I leave, and I love it. I have a door that I can close when the guys in the main area get too loud, or when I have to make phone calls, and I can spread out a bit. It's just nice. I really do like it at that office, and I am so thankful for AmeriCorps, and the opportunities that the program gives us.
I don't have too much other news, the yoga thing is probably the most exciting thing, lately. It's been a wacky and weird few months, but hopefully (I know, I say this every time), hopefully I will write more often. Or at least sooner than 5 months!
Have a wonderful day, a beautiful weekend, and enjoy life!
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