Today is officially day 15 of my 30 day yoga challenge. Besides a little bit of wrist soreness due to not practicing this much in a long time, it’s been great getting on the mat every day for an hour or so. Although I throw in a couple of asana variations, I pretty much have a routine set of poses I go through every day that I know get the sweat flowing, especially if I turn the AC off in my room. It’s about 8:15 at night right now and the temperature is 109 degrees here in lovely Baghdad. Needless to say, my room warms up rather quickly without AC and sweating is not usually a problem. I’ll probably post what my typical routine looks like in a couple days.
For the most part I’ve practiced in the evenings, about two hours after dinner. Unfortunately, after a few days of that I started feeling wiped out and lethargic by the time I was supposed to hit the mat. By the time my dinner settled I just wanted to go to bed instead. I persevered, but let’s just say I had a couple of rather lengthy nights of savasana.
I also took a week off of running, which was both good and bad. The good part was that my body, especially my knees and hips, really loosened up. The bad part was that I really love running and missed it a lot. So, I decided I needed to make time in my schedule (like I have tons of free time?) to get a regular run in as well. About the only thing I could come up with is getting up earlier, as if 5:30 am wasn’t early enough. Although it’s taken a lot of discipline, mostly to go to bed at a reasonable hour, I’ve gone for 4:30 am morning runs the last few days. It felt great to have running back, especially since it kind of takes the pressure off trying to make my evening yoga practice so physical all the time. Sometimes it’s nice to not have to rely on a super-vigorous yoga session as my only form of exercise for the day. And then this morning I decided to take a day off of running and throw in an hour of morning yoga. I’m not going to complain too much beyond saying that apart from yoga this morning, my day totally sucked, but at least it got started off on the right foot.
Anyhow, I think I’ll wrap this up and lay out the mat for a few minutes before bed.
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hi
a while back you’d a post about music during yoga. On Monday with my students for savasana, I played what i like to listen to during savasana… which is usually not Kirtan/chants actually!!
I played Streets of Philladelphia & The Ghost of Tom Joad., the first 2 songs on my savasana list….I think they liked it!! I know the Boss isn’t to everyones taste ( i’m nuts about him though!!) but as one student commented afterwards its nice to relax to music thats familiar, as “the other stuff can be a bit weird sometimes” (her words, not mine)…
Anyways not really relevant to this post, but just thought I’d follow on from before…..
Namaste!
Hey Maria – Thanks for sharing some thoughts on music. I listen to music off and on during my practice. Sometimes it motivates me and keeps me going, and sometimes it just feels boring and irritating. I think the type of music that works for yoga sort of varies by individual, but I’ve started to develop a taste for music with words and a good beat.
Actually, I looked into Jack Harrison and Michael Franti based on your previous comment on the Kirtan post and bought a couple Franti CDs and will probably get the Harrison CD. Franti’s slightly too message-oriented for me, but I enjoy the rhythm and style of his music nonetheless.
Thanks for stopping by! Brian
I kinda have a supply of Jacks CDs (I did some promo work for him on it, getting it into studio’s for sale etc etc), so let me know if you’ve trouble getting it on line.
Agree re Franti being message orientated, but i’ve seem him live twice: once with full band, once accoustic… and he’s pretty cool Makes u wanna dance!! And we all need a bit of that sometimes!!OmOmOm