Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Victorian Fires


This morning I woke up and stuck my head out the door to be greeted by the smell of bushfires again - this has been going on for about 2 weeks now. Last week, at work the smoke was so dense it came inside the building - we as a city are being smoked out. This is huge. The photo above was taken in Bairnesdale, a major regional town at 2pm in the afternoon about a week ago, looks like hell itself.

Friday, December 15, 2006

Yoga Challenge: Finished!

After the yoga challenge finished two weeks ago I've had such a busy time I've been a bit of a slack blogger!! I felt like energetically the challenge fired me out of a cannon & my life has been so busy.

So how did I go? On the last day, day 30, I did a morning class at 6am, then went to work followed by an evening class at 6pm to top it off. Was fabulous. Felt so amazing. The most interesting thing about this has been that I thought I would have hardly any free time over the 30 days, and yet I got so much done in the other parts of my life as well. I think exercise is the only way to cheat time - in that when you get the body working well, you can make leaps & bounds in other areas as well.

The biggest gift of this 30 days has been getting to know my body more and more. I now know that if my lower back is sore it's because my abs need work, and if my knees are creaky or stiff, its because my hamstrings are tight. We spend so much time & angst reacting to body-pain and yet there is a way to fix it. I'm feeling so much more optimistic about the future now.

In the last two weeks I've cut back to 3-4 times/week, and I've seen that this is actually a good pace for me. Having days off actually helps my body assimilate the changes, the 30 days at times felt like a race, but it was very good for forcing me to break through limitations. I had a few classes that when I walked into them, I was thinking, oh gawd, I'm not sure I can do this today, I feel tired or sick or whatever, but just the fact that I was committed to be in there I would get into the first few postures and forget my negativity and just get on with it. For me it was all about conquering my own imagined limitations.

I think yoga is something I will do until I die. Yesterday, I actually wanted to be in that hot yoga room so much that I skipped my boozy office xmas party so I could be there and had such an amazing class. Felt so good. Yay.

;-)

PS... I'm finding muscles in the most amazing parts of my body! Like bum muscles, there are actually muscles in there!! I've got bum muscles and I'm not afraid to use them!!

Labels: