Well hello there.
If you know me, you know that I am the least flexible person, I have bad balance, a bad knee, and I'm clumsy. So what does a person like me try to do??
Yoga.
After I had injured my back a few months ago, a friend of mine made a suggestion of buying a simple yoga DVD and trying out yoga at home. Not only is yoga great for improving your balance, and flexibility, apparently it is great for building up you core which helps protect yourself from injuries.
Two weeks ago I bought a 2 disc DVD set at Costco for $14 (pretty darn cheap, right?) with the well planned intention of doing yoga in the mornings before the craziness of the day ensues. Well, two weeks have gone by and, by golly, I love my sleep and have a really hard time walking up even just 20 minutes earlier than my girls do. Then during the day I make excuses that conditions are never perfect enough for me to be able to do yoga (or exercise at all) and I put it off . . . until TODAY! I need to keep reminding myself that if I wait for all the stars to align (kids asleep/happily occupied, house clean, laundry folded, etc.) before I roll out my exercise mat and put a sports bra on, I am never gonna exercise! No more making excuses.
So today, I did a 20 minute yoga routine and it was lovely. Like I said, I am not flexible, AT ALL, and my balance is poor, but I still enjoyed doing the routine to the best of my ability. While trying to figure out all the breathing and going through some of the poses I thought "Wow. I really suck at this. It's going to be really cool to see how much better I'll get as I keep doing this."
This is me trying to touch my toes. As you can see I actually can't touch my toes, nor have I ever been able to. I remember back to gym class in elementary school feeling sad that I couldn't touch my toes when other girls could lay completely flat on their legs, wrapping the hands around their feet. While I may never get to be that flexible, my goal to to ONE DAY TOUCH MY TOES. Ha!
I hope hope that you get to try out yoga, too :)
So happy you're doing this Jenny! I think you'll really start to love it - don't let all the technicalities of breathing etc get you down, soon you'll just fall into the flow of it and it will all become second nature! And it will for sure help with the balance, flexibility and core strength! And most of all RELAXATION!!! You'll start to crave the yoga for how relaxing the workout can be!!
ReplyDeleteYou've motivated me to do my yoga tape tonight! As I listen to all the pops, cracks & groans of my underused body I'll be thinking of you and how we're officially progressing together! Yahoo!