What's UP peeps? Yes. Today started with 90 minutes of Hot Yoga. Heavens. I love every session of Hot Yoga and I love seeing how I'm making progress. I need to shoot that vlog of my feet later-- to show you what I mean about shifting how you stand to strengthen your toes and use different parts of your shin and the ball of your foot more-- you need the full foot working to balance in many yoga poses.
These are the poses, twisting both ways that have my foot wobbling all over the place. When hot yoga dude starts our class, he has us inhale, rising up on our tiptoes, then holding, then exhaling and coming HALF WAY DOWN on our tiptoes--that move alone used to have me wobbling but I've become stronger and can hold it. The move above and variations of it, I have a ways to go. But yoga teaches you to build on YOUR pace, focus only on you and your progress and what YOUR body can do - don't race with others.
This is another pose I have a ways to go on- I have to use a block under my butt, while many others in the class can easily do this. Do I care? Nope. I'm working my way into that. When I get there, I get there.
This is butterfly pose. I got this ALL DAY people My legs are that flat to the floor. Now Frog Pose:
this is difficult, as I have tight hips but each week I get better and better. I put a link in the picture to the page with a bit more instruction on this pose. Killer.
Here is a yoga sample from Rainbeau Mars on YouTube (there are a TON of yoga videos FREE hello on YouTube-- try!!!)
Clearly Hot Yoga and I are dating in a big way. It just keeps getting better. Below is my ramble-on-a-thon, while I made some protein pancakes after Hot Yoga. MMMM. I'm doing really good on my "diet", i.e. how I'm eating while I'm losing weight. I will weigh and take measurements this Wednesday. Psyched about it. ;-)
Question of the Day: What's your favorite quick healthy meal- like protein pancakes or protein bread? Do you have any?
Hey Y'All!!! I'm BACK BACK BACK!! OMG Vacation was WONDERFUL. Just what the doctor ordered-- I listened to my own advice and did NOT work in any way while I was gone. I unplugged and chilled out and was on NO schedule at all. It was heaven. I stayed ACTIVE too. The first day I did a 90 minute power walk in the HOT Miami sun. Total Sweatfest. And then every day except Monday I got in a great workout, from power walk/run/sprint/walking lunge intervals (90 minutes) to some INTENSE Hot Yoga. Kids, I'm DOWN with the yoga more than ever now. And, I'm also kind of dating RUNNING again. He and I are taking it slow but I'm cool with it...it felt great to run again and for me, it's all about the breathing and then I'm ROCKING IT.
Check out my post walk/run/sprint/walking lunge vlog:
I LOVE this stretch. And wow I did things in yoga class that I've never done. DANGIT I didn't shoot a vlog with my BFF Kelly, the Yoga Queen of all-- but even though I didn't, stay tuned because she will be a part of our upcoming FitFluential Road Trip Events!!! So if you want to take some seriously intense and educational yoga sessions, stay tuned. ;-)
Much of what resonated with me in these yoga sessions was how important it is to overcome our fears. Kelly asked me to do drop-backs-- where basically you arch back and end up in a backbend. I was like HELLLLLLLLLLL NO I WON'T. She said, "Why not?" I said, "I can't". And she goes, "Oh you will now!". While I started sweating bullets she came over to spot me and guess what, I did it, and then, the next three days I did it. And guess what- I'll be practicing daily and WILL do them unassisted.
Go ahead. Call me a tiger. Cuz I'm GREEEEATTTT!!! Anyway, I was sooo enjoying the hot yoga, the running outside, the down time and of course just Miami. I took time out to focus on my future, on what I want to do in LIFE and what I saw, what I plan to do, what I know will be is AMAZING. Life-- well things will only get better.
Word UP.
I saw this video yesterday and had to share it. I won't tell anyone how to workout but when I do it, I like to PUSH IT, whether it's 90 minutes of hot yoga or just a killer session boot camp like this. Especially now. I'm in it to win it.
I'm back to wearing Under Armour sports bras for running-- although I'm going to start trying a lot of brands. I'm determined to find other fits and ones that I like. For those of you busty chicks like me, what's your fav??
Also, do you bring your phone with you when you run- for long runs?
Here is my ramble-on-a-thon vlog from earlier in the week. Please forgive the ratty-ass hair thing going on, I couldn't see that it was sticking up all over the place. I was talking here about my love affair of yoga, beyond the workout part.
Ahhh. Good times. All that to say, I am very much about a whole lotta Namaste in my life here and forevs!!! ;-)
I'm sharing this gem from Tony Horton, because if any of you are skeptical of yoga not being tough or for guys or an intense workout, check this:
Good Morning Kittens!! How are you? ;-) I'm feeling wonderful....vacation is just what I needed. NO schedule, no worrying about being back at the airport in two days, no "NEEDING" to do anything. And I have been getting my YOGA ON in a big way honey. See the crow pose above? I did it yesterday!!!
Ok, so I did it for about 2 seconds but still-- Kelly, my BFF who has been practicing yoga for 10+ years now and teaches numerous classes per week-- showed me a GREAT way to practice this pose and work UP to it using the block. I'm AMAZED at what a solid yoga teacher can do as far as adjusting you and making sure you are working a pose for the benefit of your body. Both Kelly and Bertha - the two teachers I've done classes with down here, both have fixed things in me and showed me some tendencies I have that I was totally unaware of- whoa.
These are the kind of poses that Kelly (not me, my BFF Kelly down here, don't be confused) can do in her sleep. It's awe inspiring to watch this woman. I am learning so much and certainly becoming more and more addicted to yoga.
We are off to yoga this morning, the past two days we've done hot yoga and today I'm going to Kelly's class which is not hot yoga but another style-- don't worry, she said she'll be on a vlog with me, we just haven't had time, as we've been out and about.
I will tell you this, I'm working on getting Kelly to agree to participate in some of our future FitFluential events as we tour the country in 2012. She's that amazing. For the record, yes, she also does weights but the majority of her "working out" is yoga. And I can tell you, at age -- well, I won't tell you her age and I'll let you guess.
QUESTION OF THE DAY: Are you into yoga? Are you a regular or random student?
Happy Sunday Kittens! How has your weekend been? Mine has been great, I'm a wee bit embarrassed to share that I have done some SERIOUS sleeping in the past couple weekends. I mean, for me, anything past 7am is usually sleeping in and GULP I slept in until 9:45am!!! I think that all the travel from January 4th to last week has built up a need for sleep internally that has grown exponentially each week. I'm listening to my body and giving it some needed rest.
I keep trying to REALLY give my body what it needs, which is a vacation in the Dominican Republic with Huge Jackman, but I have to work on those details. You know....the paparazzi would follow us and snap photographs of us and ruin all the intimacy.
Anyhoo- isn't that the coolest picture above? One of my majors in college (yes you read that right, I was a huge overachiever and had TWO majors and 3 minors, my majors were History and History of Art, as I had planned to go to law school if you can imagine that....Danielle is probably laughing right now.) was History of Art and I studied a TON of Buddhist/Hindu art. I'm fascinated by it, and it is on my newly developed Bucket List to go to India and visit all of these temples. I can't wait.
I like always doing Yoga on Sundays. It just SEEMS right. I try to NOT work at all, I get my church in, my Zen time and my chillaxin time. Tonight, I'm doing a wine tasting of some amazing wines from Australia- I'll share my reviews later, and in the future, we're gonna do some wine tweetups from my place, so y'all can "meet" some of my local besties, all while we are tipsy on wine. Good times.
Yea Yea it's Madonna- was this in her "I'm English" phase or was the prior to that season? I can't keep track, but I do see that this was prior to her shoving implants in her cheeks that look like melons. Please people SLAP ME SILLY if I ever get close to 60 and even THINK of implants IN MY FACE. I'm ALLLL ABOUT BOTOX and an eventual boob job but really, the face- you gotta just let it flow to some point. I have gaggly chicken skin under my chin but the thought of doing something to fix that FREAKS ME OUT because I've seen interviews with people where they do face lifts and then like their eyes stop blinking and they have no tears so every day is SCREAMING BLOODY HELL PAIN because they wanted to look TIGHTER. Oy. I'm fine with someone rolling a power sander over my face to help soothe the "fine lines" but cutting and pasting- in my facial region- ain't gonna happen. That's for my PC not my face.
Anyway, my point is- (I think I did attempt to try and make a point here) one of the things I LOVE about Yoga (and I guess this is true about anything- running, weight training etc.) you always can get better. I can't get my groove on like Madonna above NOW but I will. And you can bet I'm gonna show off when I can do that. Of course with my luck I'd get stuck that way and have to text with one hand to my mom or current man-friend to come save me.
If you haven't gone down the Yoga path, don't look at some of these poses and think they are easy. I think that is a big misconception about Yoga - that's it is just stretching and it's "Lame" or "easy". Um, I ask you to check out Mr. Mantastic himself, Tony Horton:
Here's something. I REALLY can't stand people that don't get Twitter and say stupid s**t about it. Tony, I need to help you there. But I forgive you because you are so dang bootylicious. Do you not know who Tony Horton is? Have you not heard of P90X? Um, see below:
He definitely passes the Bark Test. #justsayin #don'tjudgeme
So--- Yoga, combined with serious weight training and whatever your feeling is on "cardio" is a good thing. I'm telling you each week I feel BETTER. And it also FORCES me to, well to shut up. To have a quiet mind. To stop multi-tasking and focusing on work and all that I "need to do" and just BE PRESENT. That's hard for a Type A freak like me. But I'm working on it.
I found some of these videos on YouTube, and I'd seen them on the Fitness Channel or somewhere similar- anyway, some woman got all huffy puffy and said, "Oh why do these girls have to be so sexy!!!" Um, I'd say that's a good thing to be and clearly they do Yoga on a regular basis, I mean the flexibility is amazing. I will say this, I think it's a bit bizarre how they plop these girls into the middle of NOWHERE to get their yoga on-- I wonder what the people in the office buildings or the construction zones are thinking (I'm NOT gonna go there). And the narrator- my WORD! She could be talking about bowel movements and you'd listen to her- I mean really- have you ever HEARD such a relaxing voice?
QUESTION OF THE DAY: What is the weather like where you live right now? Today it is 33 degrees. GAH!
Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 04:25PM
