My Week in Yoga: #YogaEveryDamnDay!

It’s a miracle!

Or maybe we should just call it the sweet spot of the second trimester. Either way, last week was the first time in MONTHS that I had the energy/inclination to practice #YogaEveryDamnDay.  

The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that I still have a rest day. In my book, rest and recuperation is an important enough part of the practice as actually getting on your mat. This is the lesson that savasana teaches us right? Can you let go as strongly as you push or hold on? In reality, the answer for most of us is no. So yes, 6 days a week is a full week in my book. 

Monday:  

Sneaky extra morning off work after a long weekend in Florence with my love. 

I had planned for a fuller practice but the comfort of my own bed and a few urgent emails got the better of me so this was a quick but very pleasant 30min.

Tuesday: 

Rest day 

Wednesday: 

Home from work and straight on to my mat. I find doing this so much harder in the winter when it’s dark and cold and all round miserable.

I also hadn’t really consciously connected with the fact that this time last year I was in full prep-for-teacher-training mode with all the outside-imposed discipline that entails.

Part of my YTT was 30 hours of required Sadhana, aka a daily spiritual practice. I had toyed with this being meditation but quickly realised I wasn’t at a place in my life/practice where that would be in any way realistic. So it became asana self-practice. And this little ramble down memory lane prompted me to dig out to essay I wrote to reflect on this… which included these stats for Jan-Apr 2017:

• Total asana practice: 105hr 35min
• Self-Practice: 33hr 50mon
• Dynamic yoga classes: 52hr 30min
• Iyengar/flex focused yoga classes: 19hr 15min

Which means I was averaging around 6hr 20min hours of yoga a week.

Anyone care to guess what I hit this week?!

Spooky right?!

Anyway, I’ve totally wondered off point here… 20 slow, deliberate minutes on my mat after work was what I managed. And then I ate 5 pieces of marmite cheese on toast. Because, balance. And maybe pregnancy!

Thursday: 

Last minute decision to grab a class with a friend. 75min dynamic flow. This is the one we went to a few weeks ago that is very slow, but very strong. Lots of hips again this week, which I am taking it easy on as my pelvis has definitely been feeling the effects of the wonder drug that is relaxin. So perhaps not the ideal class to land in. But I was very proud of myself for not pushing in any way shape or form. Even though two chaturangas seems a bit stingy in any class with the word ‘dynamic’ in it!

Friday: 

Today was a totally glorious self-practice day. I had penciled in an hour but got carried away so it ended up being more like 75min. I warmed up, sun sal’d, had some fun with a half moon focused standing sequence as well as lots of headstanding, practiced my pincha (with a wall to be safe these days, because my tuck-and-roll exit method with a baby bump doesn’t seem like the best idea), and finished the whole thing off with some proper backbends. 

Saturday:

I had (perhaps ambitiously) signed up for two workshops with a big American insta-yogi. 

I pretty much knew I had made a mistake as soon as we sat down and he barreled right into a pretty intense hip warm up without so much as an introduction to who he was or what we were going to be doing or for me to tell him I was pregnant. 

So the style of teaching was not for me, firstly.

But the real problems came with the level of practice… it was waaaay beyond where I am on my best, bravest days, forget about when I am 5 months pregnant. I am a SLOW learner when it comes to all things physical. I need things broken down and shown to me a few different ways. I need time to build up to things, because I still have a tiny well of fear that sits at the bottom of my heart when it comes to some advanced asana. I broke a bone messing this up and couldn’t use my right arm for 6 weeks. Not only do I never want to do that again, now I have someone else to protect when I practice

But this workshop showed me how far I have come over the past couple of years, and how the lessons that yoga teaches are so much more than the postures.

I sat things out that weren’t for me. But I sat with a smile on my face, listening to the teacher and taking from him what I could. I didn’t say a bad word about myself in my head, and only a couple about the teacher (!). Instead the constant message was how well I was doing at trusting myself to know what does and doesn’t work for me, and staying with it even when it means I stuck out like a sore thumb. 

I didn’t stay for the second session, but I learned a lot from the first. Even if it wasn’t what the teacher had meant to teach me!!

Sunday:

WORKSHOP TIME! And not someone else’s strangely pitched affair, but MY workshop. A 3 hour introduction to arm-balances and inversions with 32 amazing yogis.

I am going to write a whole post about this, I promise, but for now I am just going to through out some words that just begin to touch the sides of how I felt, how I feel about this special special day. Overwhelmed. Grateful. Inspired. Impressed. Joyous. Emotional. Strong. Blissful. Balanced.

My practice consisted of a quick 10min warm up before I left, and 20mins on my mat after I got home. I demoed a lot through the 3 hours, and my triceps are certainly reminding me of that as I write this a couple of days later, but still, this is about my practice and not about my teaching so good work RAD, but it doesn’t count!!

• Self-Practice: 2hrs 35min
• Classes: 3hrs 45min
• TOTAL: 6hrs 20min