20 Shades of Yoga

A good friend of mine who is also a coworker has been going to yoga three or four times a week for several months. A couple of weeks ago she was helping me stretch in the teacher's lounge. I've also been asking her about certain moves like downward dog and in a brief conversation she said I should come with her sometime. I said I had always wanted to take a yoga class so that would be fun. Here's the additional background information you need: I have several yoga videos and I pull them out from time to time. I don't do them regularly although I always want to add it in at least once a week. I know one can gain great benefits from yoga. With the exception of Hot Yoga, I thought most yoga was the same. As you will find out I was mistaken. It was decided that Monday would be the night I would join Lisa for Yoga. On Monday she told me she would pick me up and I said "The class is an hour right?" "No. It's an hour and a half on Mondays." She proceeded to tell me that part of the time would be spent on inversions and head stands. Yes, Lisa knows me. She knows I'm a klutz. However, she was not worried at all. She had far more confidence than I did about what I would be able to do. The conversation that continually came up regarding yoga was farting. These conversations started last week when people found out I was going. "Oh everyone farts in yoga." "You can't help it because of the way you are breathing and moving." Let's be clear: This was a fear for me. I'm not going to go in there as the new girl and fart. WHAT???? You need to know that by the time Lisa picked me up for class I was pretty nervous. Farting, inversions, head stands…oh wow. We walked into the warehouse where Cross Fit was taking place and Lisa introduced me to our Yogi, Ian. As we walked away Lisa told me that Ian would be very helpful to me and that he was helpful to everyone. Then we walked into this room in the warehouse that was very dimly lit. This threw me. I thought it might be lighted more like a regular workout area. There were also numerous space heaters around the perimeter which were on. It was significantly warmer in this room than the room we had come from. Well that's because we were doing Bickram Yoga and in this style of Yoga the temperature is 105 degrees with 40% humidity. It's freezing here in Kansas City so it felt good to me. People were coming in and getting set up with their mats, towels (which I forgot, but will never forget again), blocks, and straps. I was thinking….blocks? straps? I've never needed those for my yoga videos. What are we going to use blocks and straps for? There was no type to completely panic because it was time to begin. Cue the soft music. Ian has taken his sweats and sweatshirt off and is now comfortable in a tank and shorts. Oddly enough, one of the reasons I have never gone to a yoga class before is because of the bare feet. I don't like seeing other people's feet. There was an energy in the room that didn't allow me to perseverate on feet. Once we got started I was too busy trying to remember to breathe. I don't know how many times Ian had to remind me to breathe. "We breathe. We breathe. Longer breathing. Deeper breathing. Breathe In. Breathe Out. We breathe. We breathe." Readers it didn't take long at all for us to get into some moves and Ian was next to me. "Oh this is nice. He's going to make sure I don't fall." WRONG!!! He wasn't going to let me fall, but he wasn't just standing there. I would get in position and he would put his hand on my body and push me so that I would go further than what I was prepared to go. As I looked at others in the room I saw them doing this:

I have no idea how they got from where we were to that, but I stayed where I was. We went through many many moves. Now remember those heaters I mentioned? There was sweat in parts of my body that don't normally sweat. It was HOT! There were also times when Ian would say left hand on the mat right hand on your hip, raise your left leg, raise your right arm look to your right arm…and I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. Ian has a bit of an accent so that was part of it and part of it was this is a new deal that I don't have a skill set for. I became excited every time he told us to go to downward dog or up dog. I could do those two with no problem. Somehow we got into a pose that was to prepare us for the crow which is a type of inversion. I looked over and Lisa was doing it. She was doing it! I wanted to grab my phone and take a picture, but I didn't want to ruin the moment. Every person there was working on doing. Every person, except me. I played it safe and stayed where we had started. Ian offered to help me, but I politely declined.

This is a crow. From the crow, there were other inversions. Again, Ian offered to help, but I played it safe.

There were many variations. Overall, there were people who were really intent on getting their bodies to do what looked impossible to me. Finally we made it to the stretching. I love to stretch so it couldn't be too hard. Until Ian came and pushed against me to make the stretch deeper. He kept reminding me that if "you are breathing deeper, you will stretch deeper. Use the breathing to move deeper." After all of the moves, Ian placed a cold lavender eye bag on our eyes. We lay on our backs on the floor. I'm pretty sure we were supposed to be completely relaxed. I was relaxed, but my mind was going 100 miles an hour. I'm lying on a floor, in a dark room, with soft music playing, and Ian is walking around rubbing people's feet? Lisa had told me that it was really enjoyable. Seriously, I didn't want it to stop. I was prepared to beg Ian to not stop. That was BEAUTIFUL! I loved it. As we were leaving, I was ready to burst out laughing because these people seemed to be quite advanced at what they were doing. I was the uncoordinated novice. Ian had a different opinion. He told me I had done a great job. He told me I'm very flexible and I have skills. Flexibility and skills are good. Let me just say that I am sore today. My legs are sore and as the day has worn on my abs have become sore. We all know how I feel about muscle soreness. It means the metabolism is going faster. I would encourage you, given the chance to try a yoga class. However, be careful about which you choose since there are different forms of yoga. Had I not had a friend, last night would have been completely out of my comfort zone.

The Work Ahead

Half way through the month of January and I feel on fire. My workouts have been going really well. I've spent a lot of time looking at different moves and adding some in to my strength training. Mixing it up a bit. My diet has been going well too. One day last week I was on emotional overload. I knew that if went straight home after work I would be on edge and not okay. I went to the gym for a second workout. WOWZA! I know a lot of people who do two a days to mix things up. I am excited to report that I ran further than I normally do and at a much faster pace. That second workout was a great way to help my body process all of those emotions and thoughts. I'm hoping to try and do this one or two days a week. I've also spent time in the past week reviewing the journey through pictures.

The review leads me to dichotomy of emotion. I'm proud of how far I have come, and overwhelmed with how far I have to go. My goal is to get another 50 pounds off. In my position as an elementary school counselor, I work more frequently than I care to admit speaking with young girls about body image. Yet, I find it so easy to fall into the trap of examining edited images where there is no flaw to be found. Looking at pics and videos for strength training is good on the one hand because I learn a lot, but challenging on the other because I look at those bodies and feel overwhelmed at the thought of how much work is still before me. In case you are wondering, it's my abs and thighs that bother me the most. And it's not just the pics of others I look at. It's me too. It's still difficult to look in the mirror. There are times when I am working out and catch a glimpse of myself and become disgusted. Yes! I do what I tell my students to do. I think of all the things I like about myself. I think of how far I've come. JEESH! It doesn't change what is right there before me! It doesn't remove the fat that is still there that I need to eliminate. Trainer Mike and I talked recently about my goal to lose 50 more pounds. He stressed the importance of monitoring my body fat percentage. I know he's right and I will, but it still feels like an incredulous task. (Let me just insert that I LOVE that I can still ask Trainer Mike for help and he is so understanding and willing to be there for me.) Diet is 80% of the battle before me. I am getting much better at making sure I eat. I eat both breakfast and lunch at work so there are many times I'm burning calories while I'm eating because I'm walking with my food, but at least I'm not longer using interruptions as an excuse to skip eating. Now if I can get serious about logging my food into my Fit Bit so I can make sure I'm taking in enough calories, I'll be much more confident that I'm doing everything I need to do. I hope 2014 is off to a great start in many ways, but especially your health and fitness. Take care of YOU!

A Purpose

I recently read a blog a friend of mine keeps about her new life as a Brewer's Wife. She is doing an exercise called Zero to Hero for blogging. I've decided to participate. I first started this blog at the encouragement of a friend when I began working out. The friend who is my new blogging buddy actually helped name my blog. I've had so much fun with the blog and sharing my journey of becoming healthy. It's been almost four years ago. I blogged less and less while I was in the heart of my dissertation work. There were not enough hours in the day. Quite truthfully, when there were extra hours I wanted to do anything other than type on the computer. I enjoy blogging and one of my goals for 2014 was to get back into a steady blogging routine. You will like reading this blog if you like humor…for example…I blogged about the time my pants fell off of me while working out in the gym because they were too big and I was too cheap to go buy new ones. Humor is big for me. You will also want to read this blog if you struggle with weight loss. I like to share tips that work for me. I also plan to include more information in here about how we can break food addictions. How we can use exercise effectively to achieve the results we want. I am learning more and more about clean eating. Especially, eating grain free. I plan to share much more of that on here. So if you are interested in clean eating and the research on grains, you will want to read this blog. I am no longer working out with a trainer. I'm learning a lot on my own. Although, I do occasionally call Trainer Mike with questions. I will be sharing workout information on here as well. I will also share the emotional ups and downs of life that get in the way of diet and exercise. ALTHOUGH, my focus will be on how to keep the emotions out of our diet and exercise. You might think this is impossible, but I argue that it is not. My goal of this blog as well as my FB page by the same name is to inspire others. I have lost 70 pounds. I had tried every diet gimmick ever. I had been the poster child for yo you dieting. I now know it is a life style. You hear that all the time on tv and in what you read. I had read it and heard it thousands of time. Until I went into the trenches, it did not sink in. If you are in the mindset I was in, you are probably thinking…"I don't need a lifestyle change. I just need to diet off a few pounds and then I will keep it off." Probably not going to see a lot of success that way. I had been overweight since I was a child. It just kept getting worse and worse. Until one day a few years ago I was at the doctor for some follow up tests after a mysterious illness had me in the hospital for three days after countless trips to the ER before that. The doctor said you are borderline diabetic. I asked him for a pill. I told him I had tried everything and there wasn't a diet that worked for me. He told me there was no pill. I went back a few months later feeling miserable. Insisting there was something seriously wrong with me that the tests in the hospital hadn't found. No energy, highly irritable, depressed. He pulled up my blood test results. He said, "You feel poorly because you are extremely overweight. You are borderline diabetic. This is why you feel so poorly." He asked me about my diet and exercise. He really wanted to know what kinds of changes I had made. I hadn't made any. I told him I needed a pill to help. I was begging. I couldn't do it on my own. The doctor walked out of my room, turned back and looked at me and said, "I can't fix stupid." I was FURIOUS! LIVID! How dare he! It was his job to fix me! It's not my fault I was dealt these genes and come from a family of obesity. I stewed on this for a while. I didn't tell anyone what the doctor said. I'll tell you more about this in my next blog. What you do need to know is that I have continued to go back to that doctor. I LOVE him. He is my biggest fan. He continually tells me I am an inspiration to him. He now asks me to help get some of his other patients motivated and how they can believe that they too can do this. So I want readers of this blog to be inspired. I want readers to learn from what I post. AND I want to learn from you. I want you to interact and share information with me. I will feel this blog is successful when 1) it's readership grows and 2) readers are taking the steps to get healthy. It is baby steps for sure. But those baby steps lead to amazing leaps which feel INCREDIBLE!