My Week in Yoga: Strong Start, Sick Finish

The week started with all the right intentions but events took over so it turned out to be a very light week on the mat. Launching workshops, nursery shopping and then going down with an awful cold on the hottest/sunniest bank holiday weekend ever put paid to most of that.

Such is life.

Especially when 7 months pregnant...

Monday:  

Starting the week with a really quick (and pretty rare) pre-work practice. Well, pre-hospital really as a mid-wife appointment mean that I could still roll (and it is roll these days!) out of bed at the same time, blast through some work emails and still manage 15 minutes on my mat.Last week’s bad-form-leading-to-bad-back chaturanga episode had left me both nervous and coming off doing very little so this was a tentative start. But resting up last week was clearly the right thing to do and I felt STRONG this morning. So lots of strength work it was - triple chaturangas (on my knees for now while I protect my lower back and work out whether this might just be a modification I have to do for the rest of this pregnancy), long hold crows poses and fun things like that.

Tuesday: 

Back to normal after-work, while dinner is cooking practices today: 25min, lots of standing postures.

I think I am really going to be relying on these over the next 12 or so weeks as there is much less of a space/modification issue. And it’s nice coming back to my Iyengar roots too. Everything in Iyengar starts standing: even hip opening, and it does feel a bit like coming home. Not least of all because this pregnancy is slowly, well, not so slowly over the past few weeks, winding back the level/style/complexity of my practice.

The last time this happened was in the final few days of my yoga teacher training. Where after 3+ weeks of intense training and practice, we had to get through the entire groups’ exam teaching sessions. And my body was DONE. Full chaturangas became half, wheels became bridges, floating to to the top of the mat became stepping. It was humbling to be honest. Especially after I had made so much progress in my personal practice both prepping for and then being on the training.So yes, it’s humbling again to be here. And I am learning just as many lessons this time around as well!

Wednesday: 

No yoga. I got totally carried away putting the finishing touches to my website and launching a new workshop date (you can see all the details and sign-up here if you missed it).

Thursday: 

No yoga either. Instead, we went nursery furniture shopping. This baby thing is getting really real now!

Friday: 

I had all sorts of plans for an early finish from work and a long, quiet evening practice to kick off a long, quiet bank holiday weekend. Instead, I felt myself getting ill. So naps and kitten snuggles were the order of the evening. 

Saturday:

Surprisingly woke up not feeling like death, so got on my mat for 15min before our first hypnobirthing class, before coming back to it in the evening for another 30min of flowing. The short, sharp morning session was pretty strength focused, while the evening was a lovely balanced session of warm-ups, sun sals, inversions and an ashtanga style mini-closing sequence.

Sunday:

Saturday's respite turned out to be a brief one and I was feeling pretty grim today, so no yoga to finish the week sadly.

• Self-Practice: 1hr 25min
• Classes:  0 
• TOTAL: 1hr 25min