Bringing family to class

Friday at gentle class, we got to meet Angela's husband and some of her family who were visiting from Canada. She took it really easy on us, which Shawn was grateful for, thanks to the new tattoo on her chest.

Today in gentle with Zelinda, Shawn and I brought her sister Kristi and Kristi's two daughters. It was so much fun to introduce them tot he yoga room while they're here visiting. We had a great stretch, did a lot of neck and shoulder work, and the girls are excited to go back tomorrow.

Zelina also had a theme today, which was to spread happiness. I got a hug from Zelinda before we left the studio, and I got to pass that on at breakfast to Joy, one of our favorite ladies at the Cafe Java.

After that, we had a lazy day watching movies and playing with the bassets, so joy was pretty easy. It was a good day.

two days to catch up on

Shawn and I had a long weekend on the road. We left Wednesday to go to Dallas, then Saturday down to Houston. Then Sunday home.

We took one of our dogs to Shawn's daddy's. Kiss, the pitbull, just wasn't fitting in. Daddy fenced in an acre and a half for her, and oh, y'all, you should see her run. She loves her new yard, and she's ready for daddy to be her human.

Still, it was hard to admit we'd failed her a little. That we weren't the best family for her. It hurt my heart.

After the accident, Kissy leaving, and being on the road for days, I was feeling a little cracked.

The best thing I could do was go back to gentle yoga Monday. After class I felt so much looser in my skin, so much better. My back was so tense and I didn't even know it until I laid out on the floor at the beginning of class.

Today we followed that up with Angela's hatha I class. We focused on swadhisthana, or the sacral chakra today, which is all about acceptance and renewal. That was the perfect thing. It was just so timely for me. I feel a lot like the little weed in the picture, ready to poke back out of the cracked mess and start over.

Class 24 of the 40 Day Challenge, or My Joints are Frozen

So, Thursday afternoon I ate wheat.

I am allergic to wheat in that horrifying, swollen, please give me morphine sort of way and this morning? I felt rusted shut.

I would get into a pose and then Angela would say, "Now, let's move into this next incredibly easy, peaceful, gentle pose," and my body would scream at me.

Every pose.

It happens. I know it does. My joints will hurt for two or three more days. My stomach is swollen about 10 inches bigger than Thursday morning. It bites.

Still, I went to practice. I did my thing. In savasana, I chased a little white dot of light.

It's the last week of the challenge next week -- for those of you following along, this blog is a source of endless joy and I fully intend to record my post-yoga/pilates/possibly zumba thoughts from here on out. :D

Now, I have to decide whether to go to 8 am class tomorrow for gentle or hatha I at 915...

Namaste, y'all.

S.

 

Class info:

Location: The Yoga Room

Class type: Gentle

Teacher: Angela

Class 21 of the 40 Day Challenge, or It's Good to Be Home

First things, no. The picture has nothing to do with anything. It just makes me smile.

Secondly, HOME! I'm home and it was so nice to see everyone this morning and have my yoga back. Travel practice is going to be a challenge, maybe my biggest yoga challenge, but it's glorious to come home and be back at the Yoga Room.

Thirdly, we did heart-openers today and usually those are a huge, huge challenge for me. Today? Nope. I felt good, strong, and given that it was cold and damp and my shoulder hates that type of weather, it surprised me. :D

Now, let's all look at the basset picture and have a grin.

See? You just can't be unhappy in the face of a dog in a hat.

Namaste, y'all.

S.

 

Class info:

Location: The Yoga Room

Class type: Gentle

Teacher: Zelinda

Class 16 of the 40 Day Challenge, or I May Rethink Eight AM

7 a.m. is an obscene time to be awake.

Now, don't judge. I'm a 2 a.m. to bed person. From 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. is prime writing time. I wake up at 8:15 most mornings for yoga, but 7?

Ack.

I didn't wake up until my third cup of coffee after gentle practice. I'm pretty sure I was dreaming about tap dancing rhinos doing a music video for Big Country...

I'm fixin' to head to Colorado, where I'll be blogging about our travel practice.

Prepare for hilarity. ;-)

After I nap.

 

Namaste, y'all.

S.

 

Class info:

Location: The Yoga Room

Class type: Gentle

Teacher: Zelinda

Class 15 of the 40 Day Challenge, or How Yoga Helps in Real Life Crisis When Added to Wine

I have to tell y'all. I have discovered a real life use for yoga.

Yesterday I'm having folks for supper. Lorna and I are making gluten free vegetarian lasagna. These are not gluten free people.

We cook, we clean, we pull the lasagna out after they get here and?

The noodles are like concrete -- hard and shattery, a little dangerous, crackly and absolutely not edible.

It's 239042739 degrees in my house, I have guests, I have 3 anxious dogs. Lorna looks at me, I look at her. She grabs the gluten free fusili out of the pantry and I grab the stock pot and start filling it with water. I pull each tiny shard of uncooked noodle from the pan (leaving the goo), she opens a glass of wine. We start water boiling while everyone else chats in the front room.

We pour two glasses of wine, put the fusili in the water, and Lorna says, "Breathe."

We breathe, arms going up. We forward fold in the kitchen. We breathe.

We drink a glass of wine.

We make baked pasta.

See? Yoga with real-life uses. We didn't panic. We coped. We breathed. We cooked.

Also, today in class? Something amazing happened. We did the tree pose and Angela's talking about putting our hands in a mudra. Now, two little backstory bits of info: 1. I always do the middle finger mudra because I am the queen of NEEDS PATIENCE and 2. today I was looking for Ease as my Point of Practice. Something made me put my thumb and third finger together (vitality). As soon as I did, the entire studio flooded with white light, so bright I couldn't see.

Okay, I thought. Maybe I've just had a stroke, maybe I've cut off the blood supply to my brain. Possibly my glasses are foggy.

We release the pose. I'm no longer White Light Woman (so, brain is getting blood. Go brain.)

We do the other side.

Boom.

White light of amazing joy.

Dude!

Now, there may be a scientific answer. I'm pro-science. Right now I'm happy with mystical yoga joy experience. Joy is always cooler than science.

So, ease? Not so much, but joy? Like whoa.

Namaste, y'all.

S.

 

Class info:

Location: The Yoga Room

Class type: Gentle

Teacher: Angela

Don't worry Michelle

Two weeks in a row we've missed our Wednesday pilates class. We will miss it again next week, as we'll be out of town

So, I thought I would reassure Michelle that we don't hate her. In fact, despite pilates being like death, I like it. It challenges me. However, that also means that when I have a head cold and Shawn is having female problems (ie: this week) or Shawn has a head cold and I am having female problems (last week), it's not a class I can take on.

So, today was gentle at 5pm with Angela. Today was about adaptability. I? Adapted to a throbbing head. Vicious, stabbing, oh my god I'm going to die throbbing.

At one point, my sinuses let go, and I was drowning.

Joy.

I did feel better, more energetic, after class, so I am grateful that I went.

Still, it's important to both of us to let Michelle know we got nothin' but love...

Class 14 of the 40 Day Challenge, or Someone Let Me Out of This Cocoon!

I woke up this morning with the words "Let It Be" in my head.

I tried to hold onto that all day. I had a book release early, I have a trip next week, I have cramps. Lorna has a cold.

Just let it be.

I missed pilates (because, you know, it could have been catastrophic in that did you hit a deer sort of way), but we managed a gentle class and I was going to let it be.

There I was. Letting it be.

Angela says that the practice's focus it going to be adaptation.

NOT my strong suit.

I am the OCD Queen. I am the girl of planning and scheduling and deadlines. I have had an unscheduled cold, book release, and and and...

So, I tried.

Flowing. Easy. Gentle.

What are we going to make for supper, Shawn? My brain says. And we have to clean and plan a supper for vegetarians tomorrow and you don't know what the temperatures going to be and don't forget to promo that book and you have another deadline coming and did you set up the DVR? I bet you forgot.

I'm going, what? WHAT? I've been frigging ZEN ALL BLASTED DAY LETTING IT BE AND I'M IN YOGA STRETCHING WITH THE PEACEFUL MUSIC AND THE SOFT LIGHTS AND WHY WON'T YOU LEAVE ME ALONE??????

About then I noticed my shoulder blades were possibly cradling the back of my head...

So. Okay. Adaptation is obviously something that triggers me.

Good to know.

:D

Also, I went to Sprouts and bought frozen gluten free Chinese food for supper. I'm making vegetarian gluten free lasagna tomorrow. I have tweeted and facebooked and blogged about my new title. I did set up the DVR.

Now, I'm going to take a walk.

Namaste, y'all.

S.

 

Class info:

Location: The Yoga Room

Class type: Gentle

Teacher: Angela

All about balance

class thirteen of the 40 day challenge was a 9:15 gentle with Zelinda.

This class was different in a lot of ways, and I really enjoyed it. For instance, we practiced in a circle today, facing in. Zelinda said basically that she wanted to balance comfort with newness, to take the edge of boredom off our practice.

We also did a lot of balancing in practice today. My ankle is not a lot better, and I always appreciate when Zelinda gives me strengthening exercises for it. The half moon pose remained elusive on one side, though I did try hard to make sure both sides got a shot at it.

It's hard for me to find balance on with the right leg as my standing leg. It's also elusive in life. We all talked about what made us uncomfortable in life, and I mentions how pilates makes me self-conscious but also determined to be kinder to myself. It's a delicate balance.

Kind of like tree pose.

Don't forget to scroll back a few entries and enter our contest. It runs until Sunday!

Night, y'all

Lorna

Class 12 of the 40 Day Challenge, or Joy as a Full Time Gig

First things first. Yes, that's a hand-welded iron longhorn head wine bar behind me. It is a constant source of smiles and glee.

Secondly, yep. That's an apple. I eat one every day. I balance one on my head not-considerably less often than that.

If I had any shame, I'd tell you that this photo was posed just for the blog, but I'd be lying.

You see, I spent 20 years of my life very busily dying. It was a full-time occupation and involved a lot of doctors and fear, pain and unhappiness and hiding. One day I gave it up. I know how glib that sounds, and in some ways it was a process, but in many ways, it was just that simple.

One day I had a vision and I gave up dying as a lifestyle.

My goal now is joy.

Yoga is a part of that for me. Tree pose. Happy baby pose. Laughing with Zelinda before class. The way Angela's hands are always cold or the smile B gives me every time she sees me. Michelle's laugh. The way Stacy wiggles. Teasing Christin. Then there's the fact that we're doing this together. The best parts of my day are the post-yoga chat (at the 620 Cafe, the Starbucks, Cafe Java). What worked, what didn't. Did you notice that my belly was growling? What did you think about during final relaxation? I think my butt fell off.

My joy level is *always* higher after yoga. (I have even been known to laugh after pilates. That may be hysteria.)

Some days I totally suck at my job. Mostly, though, I'm one hell of a professional dork.

Namaste, y'all.

S.

 

Class info:

Location: The Yoga Room

Class type: Gentle

Teacher: Zelinda

Patience

Today in the 9:15 gentle class, we were all about patience.

I am not generally a patient person. I'm also most impatient with myself.

Today I worked hard to get my intention set in my mind and work through it. I think I did pretty well, but I have to say the stillness of the last 15 minutes of class *did* test my patience. I really had to struggle to clear my mind during the bolster work.

Patience is a turtle-slow process for me. Doing yoga six days a week is paving the way, though. Every so often I have a breakthrough.

Strangely enough, though, today it was in the car while we all settled into singing the Boxer, by Simon and Garfunkel. You know those moments when everyone agrees to stop talking and be moved by a song? Yeah. That was where my work in class finally manifested itself today.

Weird, huh?

Night, y'all!

Lorna

Class Ten of the 40 Day Challenge, or... I got nothing

Sorry, y'all. What I thought was a little bit of allergies this morning has become a bad head cold, complete with drippy goo, fever, chapped face, and racing heart.

:(

I did get up and go to class this morning; I am posting. I make zero promises for tomorrow.

Someone send chicken soup and hot tea.

Namaste, y'all.

S.

 

Class info:

Location: The Yoga Room

Class type: Gentle

Teacher: Angela

My inner thighs don't surrender

Angela's 5 o'clock gentle class tonight was about surrender. You might have seen that in Shawn's post.

I have trouble with that concept. My body and mind fight it. I'm not sure why, as I would hardly call myself a control freak. I am a huge procrastinator, though, which means I do have trouble surrendering to the fact that some things must get done.

I was pondering that when we were laying on our backs doing a variation on the bound ankle pose. I pressed the soles of my feet together, let my knees fall to the sides. Uh-huh. You should have seen my inner thighs, y'all. My legs were flapping like duck wings, and it was all involuntary movement. My muscles were so not surrendering. It made me giggle, but it also made me think of all the things I've been putting off and why. Why I'm resisting.

I'm not sure I came to any conclusions, but it was sure worth mentioning.

Thanks to the lightning strike that hit just outside our house at 7am and the resulting chaos, I was pretty stressed tonight. Class put me in a much better mood, so I think I must have surrendered something, right?

Night y'all!

Lorna

Lorna, Unplugged

This morning was class #7. Gentle at 9:15 with poor Zelinda, who could barely talk due to allergies. It hurt to hear, so it had to hurt her. :(

Still, I had Thoughts. Yes, with random capitalization.

I had thought, with the kind of pragmatic cynicism that only comes from being the member of a partnership who is used to hearing, "I have an idea," that the 40 day challenge would just be a huge thing. Like the kind of thing that hangs around your neck at a conference and holds your name tag. It's not heavy, but it interrupts everything you do. I thought that. I admit it. I have so much work to do I'm hysterical, we're taking a week out of town mid-challenge, and I was sure all I would get out of the challenge was sore muscles.

As evidenced by this blog, I have already learned better. But what I got out of today was the realization that, since I work from home, and all of my work involves being plugged in (even at the Target I can do marketing work on my iPhone), my daily yoga practice is the one hour a day I can completely unplug. No phone. No tablet or laptop by the bed. No Kindle, tempting me to do market research. (How cool is it that I get to read romances and call it market research, y'all?)

Yoga is totally me time. I think of yoga. I think of intent. Sometimes I might wander into karma thoughts. It's not always physically easy (pilates, anyone?) but it's something totally unrelated to everyday stress.

That's kind of made of awesome.

Later, y'all!

Lorna

Class Seven of the 40 Day Challenge, or Living in My Skin

So, here's the deal.

I've been a big girl all my life. When I say big, do not misunderstand. I mean big in that topping out at 500 pounds, there were 8 Xs in my clothes tags, buy me two or three airplane seats sort of way.

I am still a big girl.

I lost half my body weight four years ago. I'm still big.

I'll always be big.

Now, though, I'm big with skin.

LOTS of skin.

My apron is a stunning thing. Floppy, loose, empty, C-section and hernia surgery skin that sort of...hangs down there and reminds me that you can't weigh 300 (400, 500) pounds plus for 25 years without repercussions.

I'm talking skin that you can do origami with, y'all. It's...amazing.

It's also a big yoga challenge. I forward fold over it. I catch my elbows in it. When we try inversions, periodically I worry about drowning in it. Today in class I couldn't find a good place for it during the seated forward folds. (Hey, I promised honestly, right?) No matter where I shoved and pushed, it was there, possibly trying to fold itself into one of those paper cranes...

It's my challenge and, I admit, sometimes I consider having it all removed, but, you know... It's mine. It's my badge reminding me that healing is possible, that my body is not my enemy, that perfection is for magazine covers.

Also, you know, my basset hounds find it comforting. ;-)

Namaste, y'all.

S.

 

Class info:

Location: The Yoga Room

Class type: Gentle

Teacher: Zelinda

Class Five of the 40 Day Challenge, or There is One Reason I am Awake at 8 a.m. on a Saturday

Class today was packed! (See me tie in this wicked cool image with something yoga-y? :D) 21 people, I think. Crazy, but there was fun chatting and bending and folding and I didn't smack anyone even once (accidentally).

Lorna and I were talking on the way out about how the 8 am gentle yoga was where we started, 2 1/2 years ago.

Let me tell you, I was sitting one day after a hard weight workout, and I decided to try yoga. I told Lorna we were trying yoga and, after the look of shock stopped (well, okay, first there was a look of shock, then a spate of hysterical 'we're going what?' laughter, then another look of shock/horror, then pure, unadulterated fear, because that was how I get us into trouble...), Lorna says, "Uh, okay...where?"

So, I googled.

As an aside: Do any of you remember life before Google? When figuring things out involved Yellow Pages and libraries and long distance phone calls to your mom to ask what to do? I mean, Yay Search Engines!

Anyway, I googled and found a few places. Some closer, some free. Some this. Some that. Some not at 8 am on a Saturday morning (hey, I'm a professional writer; my working day starts at 8pm and goes to 4am).

Still, I have to tell you, I never considered another class. My soul said Zelinda was it (Go ahead, mock. I'm used to it. I listen to the universe when it tells me to pay attention. It's a thing.) and so, off we went to Target to find yoga mats.

(Mine was pink. Feel free to pretend surprise.)

Saturday morning rolled around. We got up, walked the bassets, Lorna cursed me, I considered just going back to bed. We got into the car, drove over to the dance studio and passed it five or six times before pulling in.

We turned off the car and sat. We sang "Voices Carry" with Til Tuesday.

We stared at each other.

We discussed just leaving.

We sat in the air a little longer, making it halfway through "Thriller" before we did our "we are grown ups and brave and not cowards and already printed out the new student forms and filled them out and wasting paper is bad damn it" pep talk and went in (yes, we rationalized THAT much).

B and Zelinda would laugh now to know just how much gumption it took for us to finally take the plastic off my yoga mat and walk into that room the first day, but it did. I was so scared my glasses were shaking, me and my new yoga pants, trying to look confident so Lorna didn't bolt.

As soon as I was in there, B said hello, Zelinda chatted, and it was okay enough that I didn't run.

It took a couple of weeks before I knew it was okay enough that, when Zelinda asked me to do something basically impossible, that I not only didn't run, I cracked up. (And usually fell over. I'm sort of Weeble-shaped.)

So, yeah. Still getting up at the crack of dawn on Saturdays.

Still bending and stretching.

Although I admit that, sometimes when we pull up, we do sit in the car and car dance for a few minutes, if the music is *really* good.

Namaste, y'all.

S.

 

Class info:

Location: The Yoga Room

Class type: Gentle

Teacher: Zelinda