The plan from this spring was, I'd go to yoga classes in the mornings when I was in Vancouver.
This plan has not exactly worked out. Partly it's just been easier not to go, which is always the bane of such things. Partly it's that one week of yoga is not enough to offset ~3 weeks of inactivity, and so the one week started feeling awful instead of refreshing/restorative. Whatever, since at least May I've not been going to yoga.
Attempts at in-house exercise have fallen through as well. The vaunted seven-minute workout feels like, well, work, which makes it much less likely that I'll actually follow through. I got myself a cheap exerbike over the summer and used that for awhile, biking and watching an episode (or half an episode) of something over lunchtime. I'm not sure why that dropped off, other than "it just did." Maybe, again, it felt like something I was pushing myself to do, which meant that when I got overstressed it was one of the things that fell off. And there's yoga classes offered in town, but always one a week or so. That would have been better than nothing but not nearly the consistency that I'm looking for.
But a couple of weeks ago a yoga studio opened up in town, offering daily morning and evening classes. So Erin and I did maybe a week's worth of those, and... it felt good. Good to be stretching again, good to be doing something regularly. It's not hot-yoga, which is okay (especially because, think of the heating bill in the winter). Less intense, I think; probably for the best. It's also just a different style than I'm used to, which means that a lot of the poses are the same, or similar, and her ways of getting us into them are wildly different.
With that as a refresher, this past week in Vancouver I've made it to morning yoga every day. I don't think I was doing that very much even when I lived here. It's been quite good. By Wednesday I was able (mostly) to get back into eagle-arms, which I hadn't been able to do since at least August. And, I dunno. I feel better. I ... somewhere between "feel more like me" and "like me more". I am not the most reliable observer of my own mental state but this seems to be a thing that I enjoy, and I can't tell why either.
In some ways I feel better about it than I did when I lived here. I've mostly accepted that sleeping-hero is just not a pose that I can do, and that while I can do floor-bow I am better off just repeating locust, because for whatever reason kicking my feet back into my hands is extremely difficult. (I can, mostly, do dancer, but getting into it on the left side takes some doing.) And I've given up on trying to do actual prayer-twists (squat, hands together, elbow to opposite knee) and instead do the opposite-hand-to-knee, other-hand-to-back, twist variation, which works for me. Anything involving bending with straightish legs is also Not On but I've known that since kindergarten. ("Bend over and touch your toes." "Okay." "No, without bending your knees." "... I can't.")
I'm also beginning to accept that I do not have terribly good spatial awareness of my body. I whack into things all the time. In the Coal Harbour apartment, there was a particular bookcase that I walked into enough times that it was memorable, without ever mentally absorbing that "the hallway is narrower than i think at that corner". (This is also a source of some amount of my unhappiness around clutter: it requires me to constantly be aware of where my limbs are at all times.) For whatever reason, in yoga that's okay. It may be to do with "for the next hour i am gonna be hyperfocused on my physical being" and so it doesn't come up as much, or I can correct for it, or something. I'm honestly not sure.
But I walked into the studio on Monday morning, dark and warming-up and mostly empty, and rolled out my mat and hooked my towel over one corner to stretch it out, and... it felt like home.
This plan has not exactly worked out. Partly it's just been easier not to go, which is always the bane of such things. Partly it's that one week of yoga is not enough to offset ~3 weeks of inactivity, and so the one week started feeling awful instead of refreshing/restorative. Whatever, since at least May I've not been going to yoga.
Attempts at in-house exercise have fallen through as well. The vaunted seven-minute workout feels like, well, work, which makes it much less likely that I'll actually follow through. I got myself a cheap exerbike over the summer and used that for awhile, biking and watching an episode (or half an episode) of something over lunchtime. I'm not sure why that dropped off, other than "it just did." Maybe, again, it felt like something I was pushing myself to do, which meant that when I got overstressed it was one of the things that fell off. And there's yoga classes offered in town, but always one a week or so. That would have been better than nothing but not nearly the consistency that I'm looking for.
But a couple of weeks ago a yoga studio opened up in town, offering daily morning and evening classes. So Erin and I did maybe a week's worth of those, and... it felt good. Good to be stretching again, good to be doing something regularly. It's not hot-yoga, which is okay (especially because, think of the heating bill in the winter). Less intense, I think; probably for the best. It's also just a different style than I'm used to, which means that a lot of the poses are the same, or similar, and her ways of getting us into them are wildly different.
With that as a refresher, this past week in Vancouver I've made it to morning yoga every day. I don't think I was doing that very much even when I lived here. It's been quite good. By Wednesday I was able (mostly) to get back into eagle-arms, which I hadn't been able to do since at least August. And, I dunno. I feel better. I ... somewhere between "feel more like me" and "like me more". I am not the most reliable observer of my own mental state but this seems to be a thing that I enjoy, and I can't tell why either.
In some ways I feel better about it than I did when I lived here. I've mostly accepted that sleeping-hero is just not a pose that I can do, and that while I can do floor-bow I am better off just repeating locust, because for whatever reason kicking my feet back into my hands is extremely difficult. (I can, mostly, do dancer, but getting into it on the left side takes some doing.) And I've given up on trying to do actual prayer-twists (squat, hands together, elbow to opposite knee) and instead do the opposite-hand-to-knee, other-hand-to-back, twist variation, which works for me. Anything involving bending with straightish legs is also Not On but I've known that since kindergarten. ("Bend over and touch your toes." "Okay." "No, without bending your knees." "... I can't.")
I'm also beginning to accept that I do not have terribly good spatial awareness of my body. I whack into things all the time. In the Coal Harbour apartment, there was a particular bookcase that I walked into enough times that it was memorable, without ever mentally absorbing that "the hallway is narrower than i think at that corner". (This is also a source of some amount of my unhappiness around clutter: it requires me to constantly be aware of where my limbs are at all times.) For whatever reason, in yoga that's okay. It may be to do with "for the next hour i am gonna be hyperfocused on my physical being" and so it doesn't come up as much, or I can correct for it, or something. I'm honestly not sure.
But I walked into the studio on Monday morning, dark and warming-up and mostly empty, and rolled out my mat and hooked my towel over one corner to stretch it out, and... it felt like home.