Tag Archives: yoga

Resolution Edition!

Posted on January 3, 2013 | 3 Comments

It wouldn’t be January if the internet wasn’t teeming with resolutions! Why not add some of my own to the melee?

If you’ve been following this blog for a while (don’t worry if you haven’t been, your resolution can be to start!), you know that my banner year for resolutions was the year I learned to eat tomatoes.

documentation of a less successful resolution: eating beets

Alas, all resolutions are not so easily reached. I failed to replicate that success with a similar resolution to begin eating beets. (Beets taste like dirt, blood, and hate. And when they come out of a can, they look like organs. I simply cannot get behind those vegetables.)

That’s not going to stop me from making resolutions for 2013!

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first downward dog of 2012

Posted on March 18, 2012 | 6 Comments

First up, sorry about the theme-induced whiplash.  One of the awesome things about WordPress is that they are constantly introducing new, free blog themes.  I’m easily seduced by shiny new layouts – hence, the frequent changing of the blog theme.  This one looks pretty good, though, right?

Moving right along.  I’ve had a pleasantly productive Sunday.  I took my first yoga class in … wow, I don’t even know long.  I don’t think I’ve taken a yoga class since I started working out at Equinox, and I joined Equinox in June.  Eesh.  That’s even longer than I thought.  It had become this vicious cycle: I was afraid to go to yoga because of how off my yoga game I was, and that just meant that, as more time went on, I got even farther and father from where I wanted to be.  So I wouldn’t go.

Also, Equinox is more intimidating than Crunch.  So there’s that.

I always loved Crunch, but it – at least the locations I visited – was always kind of like working out in a basement.  The woman I took yoga from at the Union Square Crunch was hilarious; it certainly was not a serious yoga class.  (That is not to say that she didn’t lead us through challenging poses and sets – she did – but, come on, how serious can the class be when it’s called Virgin Yoga?)

Equinox on the other hand, is aesthetically pleasing and pretty luxe.  (The Kiehl’s products in the shower are better than the products I have in my own shower – which makes getting ready for work there that much more appealing!)  People look a lot more serious about their exercising in there.  And then there’s the way the yoga studio looks.

yoga studio at Equinox Soho - image from the Equinox website

See my point?  That’s not the kind of place for a girl with a sloppy chaturanga (and “sloppy” is being generous) who has been known to fall out Warrior 1.

But, as my coffee mug (filled with pencils) reminds me, Do one thing every day that scares you.  So today that thing was to slink back to yoga.

And it was fantastic.  I’m really, dismally out of fighting yoga shape.  (Do yogis fight?  Seems unlikely.)  But I got through it, and I feel a million times better for it.  Unfortunately, the girl who taught the class today – who was awesome and approachable, the way I like my yoga instructors – was just a sub.  Now I’ve got my eye on some weekday yoga classes …

That really only gets us up to 10:30 a.m. of my productive day, but I’m hungry, so the rest will have to wait!

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I am resistant to change … in my yoga practice

Posted on April 7, 2011 | 3 Comments

I went to yoga class last night for the first time since before I left on vacation. I was feeling out of shape and tight, and I was really looking forward to the class.

I lined up, darted in, and secured my favorite spot,1 and then stepped out of the room to grab a drink of water. I knew something was wrong the moment I re-entered the room. The lights were dim, there was music playing, and everyone was laying calmly on their mats.

That might sound like a good way to prepare for yoga for many people, but that’s not the reason I take this class. I don’t practice in a yoga studio; I practice at Crunch Gym. I used to visit a yoga studio in Chicago, and I like the Crunch classes so much more. They don’t seem to take themselves so seriously – which is not to say that they aren’t challenging or conscientious about proper form; they are most certainly both. They just have a more lively feel to them, an attitude that yoga can be fun. That’s an even more true of the class that I normally take, which is led by an energetic and entertaining woman named Glennie. She talks through most of the class, often telling us outrageous stories about things like chickens running wild on Second Avenue and surviving kidnapping with pranayama. I love it.

Already I could tell by the quiet in the room that this would not be my normal yoga class. Sure enough, a thin, tattooed girl in baggy sweatpants and a Rocky Horror Show t-shirt stepped to the front of the room and announced, “I’m not Glennie.”

Glennie varies what we do in class each week, but we usually start each class with a couple of rounds of Surya Namaskara A. Sometimes we do Surya Namaskara B, or a modified version thereof, but we always start with sun salutations.

I’m really not even sure what this girl did to start the class. It had pieces of the sun salutations … but we performed them in a choppy manner, not in a flow. I think she might have been a Bikram instructor because we did a lot of the Bikram poses. In any event, I was distracted most of the class because she had us all facing each other. It’s slightly disconcerting to be making eye contact with a stranger while you’re trying to concentrate on not falling over while in Garudasana, and I can’t even begin to explain how awkward it made our (sad and painful) attempts at Hanumanasana.

In all fairness, she was a fine instructor … I’m just resistant to change in my yoga practice. I like a little variety, but I don’t like having the entire game changed on me. The good side of this, however, is that it has inspired me to pull out my yoga mat here at home and do those sun salutations!

1 Do you remember when I decided I wasn’t going to be unnecessarily competitive toward getting a spot in yoga class? Yeah, me neither, apparently.

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and this is what you do not do

Posted on September 30, 2010 | 2 Comments

I was made an example of in yoga class last week – and not because my downward dog is so impressive.

My favorite instructor teaches a sixty minute class (which, because I’m not a super-strong yogi,1 I vastly prefer to the ninety minute classes) at 6 pm on Wednesdays. The small problem here is that, every other day of the week, I work out at 4 pm, and therefore I have my post-workout snack around 5:15 or 5:30. My body is used to having a snack at that time, and so it wants to have a snack before yoga starts.

Last week, I munched on a Luna bar while I waited for class to start and then, because I didn’t see any trash cans in that corner of the gym, tucked the wrapper under my towel when we went into the studio. Fast-forward about thirty-five minutes, and I’m sweating in a three-legged dog while our instructor, this fabulously nutty woman who sometimes breezes into class wearing this huge, outrageous floppy hat, walks around the room. She tapped me on the back and whispered, “Did you eat that before class?” I acknowledged that I had and apologized for bringing the wrapper into the studio.

“It’s okay,” she told me. “That just reminds me I should bring something up with everyone.”

Oh no. That sounded ominous.

We shifted to rest in child’s pose, and she began telling us that we shouldn’t eat for at least two hours before we practice yoga. It wasn’t just that we shouldn’t do it, she told us, it was that it was one of the basic principles of yoga not to do it. I was mortified. I felt only marginally better when she also (gently) reprimanded the students who had brought water bottles into the studio.

I was also slightly indignant. I mean, it was a Luna bar. It wasn’t as though I had eaten a Subway sandwich or something. Regardless, I made a point of not eating before class last night.

This was unquestionably the wrong decision. It was impossible for me to concentrate on my breathing or the poses because I kept thinking about when I would get to go home and have dinner. I bolted out of there when class was over, and I didn’t even make it all the way home. I had to stop at the Duane Reade on my way to the subway so I could buy a cup of grapes.

Consider my lesson learned: one shouldn’t eat before yoga, but one shouldn’t not eat before yoga either. It looks like I’m going to be having a 4 pm snack on Wednesdays from now on.

1 Yet! I’m not a super-strong yogi yet, but someday I will be!

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