A case of the Mondays

Never has a yoga class felt like such a treat as it did on Friday. Friday was a loooooooong and stressful day at work. Thankfully I'm doing a 30 day challenge and I HAD to go to yoga. Can't fail now! I was almost giddy in class because I was so thankful to be out of the office.

Well now I'm back. I'm sure my class today will feel like a wonderful treat. I'm expecting another busy day.

Day 24!

Today in yoga I did this pose

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And then I made this face

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Ok. I only held this pose for a few seconds, but that’s a few seconds longer than I ever held it before. Day 24 was a success. Less than a week left now!

Day 94786590394521

Ok it's actually only day 21, but it sure feels like more.

Last I left you, I promised to try to work harder and you know what? I think I am. I’m feeling things in class that I’ve never felt before. Different muscles are sore after class. I’m listening to the teacher and I’m SUCKING in my abs. (Turns out, those muscles are actually really useful.) I’m even learning to love the poses that I hate.

Like this one

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Or this one, except that mine looks NOTHING like this

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I still don’t love this one yet and I’m not sure that I ever will, but hey, I’m trying it at least.

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The funny thing that I’m learning is that you never really will get all of it perfectly, and that’s ok. For some reason, going into yoga I thought that I would do yoga, become flexible, and everything would just stay that way and be wonderful. That doesn’t happen. Our bodies are not perfect. We will never be able to do everything perfectly. But I think that’s ok. So for my last week and a half of my 30 day challenge, I’m going to keep working hard, but I’ll try to remember it’s ok to not be perfect.

30 day Update

I somehow got super busy today, but I’d like to take 2 minutes to update you on my 30 day challenge.

We will not speak of day 15. I don’t know what happened, but I really wasn’t “there” that day. Day 16 was a little better. Then something happened half way through my Day 17 class. I realized I was kind of coasting, just doing what I knew I could do, and not trying to do anything extra. The second half of the class was amazing. I tried and because I tried, and REALLY tried not just half tried, I felt things I hadn’t really felt before. Like there are a lot more muscles in my stomach than I thought, and I wasn’t using most of them in my sit up. And my calf reached a whole new level of stretchiness. Here’s to day working hard on day 18!

Also here’s a picture of Jack McBrayer (aka Kenneth from “30 Rock”). He was at the Apple store learning all about iCloud.

Day 14!

I’ve realized something. Now, this may sound shocking, but I think too much. I know. How can I think too much? In class, the teacher gave me a correction on one of my postures. I started laughing because I realized that EVERY teacher gives me that same exact correction. After class I asked about it. I asked how to do it. I was really hoping for some top secret tip. Nope. He said to stop thinking about it and just do it. *Sigh* The problem with thinking is usually your brain just gets in the way. It tells you things like “This is too hard” or “It’s too hot in here” or “I’ll do this tomorrow.” Sometimes your brain even says things like “I look pretty good doing this” or “I think I’m doing this right” but even those thoughts get in the way. If we’re thinking about it too much, we’re not really feeling it.

Now, how do you stop thinking? It’s easy to shut off my brain when I’m browsing Facebook or when I’m watching reality TV. But it’s hard to not think when you’re thinking about not thinking. But I’m trying. Today, I focused on just listening to the teacher, without adding my own thoughts. It helped but it wasn’t easy. I guess that’s what I’m going to be working on for the last half of my 30 day challenge. Not thinking. Who woulda thought?

Well, I went for the work from home route. Today will be day 10 and I gotta say, I'm having a rough time. Every time I have a strong and amazing class, it's followed by a class where I feel like I'm going to die and all I can think about is running from the room. I think it happens to keep my ego in check.

I'm about to head over to the lunch time class soon. Here's to hoping I don't feel like dying.

Yoga Dilemma

I’m a week in and my 30 day challenge and I know that this is the part where it starts to get hard and you start thinking “Is this EVER going to end?” But so far, I think it’s going really well. I’m learning lots of interesting things about my body. You would think that doing the same poses over and over again would get really stale and boring, but it doesn’t. Each time it feels different. During my pilates adventures, I discovered a whole bunch of core muscles that I literally didn’t know existed. You know what? Using those muscles really helps! Things that seemed totally impossible are now just nearly impossible just by using those muscles. And I also don’t distribute my weight evenly. My left leg doesn’t do as much work as my right. Who knew?

I now have a dilemma. This Thursday, my friends and I are going to see Wicked. I literally haven’t seen a Broadway show in FOREVER, so this should be pretty exciting. BUT if I go to the show after work, I can’t go to yoga and I can’t fail the 30 day challenge! So here are my options:

1. Get up at 5:30am and go to the early morning class, then to work, then to the show. But that sounds EXHAUSTING.
2. Skip it. I know that they’ll let you make up one of your classes another day by doing two classes in one day. I could do that, but that feels like cheating.
3. If I could find some reason to work from home for the day, I could take a long lunch and go then. But what would my reason be?

So which one do I go with?