I'm an evengelical yoga bitch. I tell anyone who will listen about it's benefits. I'm annoying, but well-intentioned. To say that having a yoga practice (ugh, even TYPING out "practice" made me cringe at how pretentious it sounds!) has improved my life and my health is a total understatement.
One of the things I find beneficial is that it's never stopped challenging me. I've never gotten bored. The challenge isn't about how many more sets you can do, or how much further you can go. For me it's almost completely psychological. I mean it's cool to see your body do new things, but getting over the mental roadblocks that prevented you from getting there, well that's the real accomplishment. Learning to focus, NOT to multitask. Learning to breath. Learning to take risks. These aren't things that come easily to me. And maybe the biggest one: learning to set aside your ego, to be willing to look ridiculous. To accept yourself as you are NOW.
I'm trying to focus more on my health after having backslid for a couple of months, and yoga is my go-to "hard" workout. It's the one that I can NOT half-ass. It's just not even possible, at least not without injury! I'm lucky in that while my general fitness might decrease (my endurance and cardio drop), I'm usually able to hold onto most of my flexibility and strength, not to mention the knowledge that comes from years of practice, and I can usually jump back in (no pun intended). Basically this means that I can't run to save my life, but after a half dozen workouts, I can get back to what I'd consider a decently challenging routine. Recently I've been adding these crazy "yoga pushups" and "yoga mountain climbers" to my routine, along with more arm balances like this one:
Some of the reasons that poses like this are challenging aren't because you need to be flexible, or because you need arms of steel, but because you're core needs to be BAD ASS. You try that mofo without with pulling everything together first, and pain. Pain will be coming.
Along the same lines is my next challenge: headstands. This is definitely a case of needing the extra core strength but mostly? I just need to quit being such a weinie. Those suckers scare the crap out of me! If I can get all the way up there, I'm ok, but the idea of basically flinging your limbs over your head, upside down, ON YOUR HEAD is scary as hell. I was totally that kid that, in gym class, would run right into a handspring and bail at the last second, usually wounding myself in the process. But you know what? That's why this is the perfect "next step" for me. I know how to increase my flexibility, my cardio, and my strength. Really, I could do most of that by running. Why I do yoga is because it scares me. Because it challenges me to push myself outside my comfort zone. Because it forces me to look ridiculous. Because I often stumble over and over and over again, before I can log even the most basic attempt. Because as bad ass as I think I look in that pic above, I look like a drunken wallabee attempting a headstand. Because being forced to set aside your ego, is good for the soul.
So I pulled off a "sort of" head stand today at the gym, and I'll keep trying, and I'll keep being humbled. But one day, probably sooner than I would have thought, I'll be back to feeling like a bad ass. In the meantime, I'm gonna keep watching this video and trying to rub the burn off my ego:
video found at lululemon.com
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