Love Me My Power Yoga For Happiness!

... with Eoin Finn's dvd of course! I finally did it again this Monday with his sure to uplift "Strong, Free, and Happy" 53 minute class. It's the perfect time, the perfect sequencing, his voiceover is so calming and smooth, yet fun at the same time and it has most of my favorite practice goal postures for this year in it! All with no dread factor. Sometimes primary gives me dread. lol! But this doesn't. There's something happy and approachable about it yet it's no wussy either. It will challenge you as it mirrors the sequencing of primary but sprinkles in more arm balances along the way. Which I LOVE! It affords me the opportunity to practice Kino's arm balancing teachings a number of times throughout the practice. And the floor series has just the right amount of seated postures with jump backs which is rare among non ashtanga dvd's! And includes all these lovely arm balances: bakasana jump back, eka pada galavasana, ashtavakrasana to koundinyasana jump backs, tittibhasana, and kurmasana jump backs. I'm in heaven!

My Practice

It was so satisfying as I did the whole thang this time. Sometimes I cheat and only do two-thirds of it. But this time I did it all! Yeah me! It felt so good to do the arm balancing and notice my lift is more sure and my jump backs a touch better. My postures felt a little more fluid and open, my twists more upright and turned. For the standing warriors sequence, I was able to do it without breaking to straighten my legs! This is huge as Eoin burns your quads by keeping you in it FOREVA!! ~ burn baby burn with warrior 1, warrior 2, side angle, twisting side angle, without coming out of it once!! Yowza!! That will give you some wicked quads and a booty butt like no otha!! Then I finally was able to do an almost easy warrior 3 hold into utthita hasta padangusthasana into dancers pose. Yes! Lovely to see improvement in these as my warrior 3 can suck with me giving in to airplaning my arms instead of holding them out in front. For some weird reason it's almost agony for me to hold them out this way. But it was almost easy-peasy this time!

Floor was just as satisfying, with jump throughs getting better little by little. I did my practice front splits while they did abs. I already killed them in gym so there was going to be no abs! Splits are still painful but my mantra while in the pose is "just keep on keeping on and it will get easier, it WILL get easier" because I truly believe it will. Then I also added bhuji before we practiced kurmasana. Then we did my other goal poses of baddha konasana, ushtrasana and urdhva dhanurasana. Still suck but I just keep telling myself ...

... practice, practice, practice kino style and all is coming!

Cathe, Kino and Travis!

The dynamic trio! ... I'm so proud of myself as I just did 3 workouts in a row since I've been back at work starting this past Monday, with my awesome go to trainers. I decided to print out a workout schedule and try really hard to focus and stick to it. I find that planning, printing and having my schedule in front of me at my desk is really helping me with my motivation and focus. I was finding that in my heart I want to do it. The heart drive is there BUT my physical, psychological motivation was lagging behind once the evening came around. This way, seeing my planned schedule and also knowing my days off is really helping me so far. But the true test is time over tension and consistency. So we'll see!

My Bakasana Ideal
(arms straight, knees higher)

My Bakasana Reality
(arms bent, knees lower, but getting there!)

I'm going to try and keep this short and sweet. Just an overview as I need to get to bed!

Travis Monday: 

On Monday I did my hearthrob, Travis', Ultimate Yogi Flexibility and snuck in a bakasana (arm balance) and jumpback to chatarunga. Weee! I felt stronger the second time around. Love the front splits in this one which he has you sit in forever! I'm practically groin down on one side. Yes! My hammies feel quite knackered the next day, but you know it's just stretchy growing pains — the Travis' leftover effect — pummelling my hammies to submissive openess. All's good.

Cathe Tuesday:

Then on Tuesday I did the awesome Cathe's XTrain All Out Low Impact HIIT. My achilles have been feeling a touch twingy lately from all that plyometric jumpy fun I've been having. Been icing diligently but thought what better time than this to try her dvd. Man, this got my heart rate up. It was funtastic.

She uses alot of low impact cardio moves that really hit the quads hard making it anaerobic too. Those quads burn!! There was floor work then step work and finally glide disc. I'm still having trouble with those discs. I can't quite keep my feet on them without them sliding off during the exercises. I'm trying to figure out what the magic trick is. But overall this was an amazingly fun, challenging, HIIT, quad quaking sweatfest without any impact that left my quads nice and sore the next day. I even felt the soreness in my vastus medialis muscle (the teardrop) muscle close to my knees. Nice! This is a muscle that's always been hard for me to engage properly yet is key to keeping my patellas stabilized. So, it's nice to know that all those vastus medialis leg extension machine exercises that I do at the gym is paying off.

Kino Wednesday:

And I topped it all off tonight with my favorite beautiful ashtangi yogini teacher, Kino's Primary dvd. Not that I don't have other fav yogi teacher's ~ we all know me and Travis ~ but sorry Travis I have some other loves too. lol!

With Kino's dvd, I love her pacing which is a bit quicker and her impressive non-stop dialogue of instructions. Some will love the chatter and some won't. I love it. It actually keeps me focused and in the zone. Also, if you really listen to what she's saying her directions are a phenomenal gold mine of tips, teaching and guidance into each posture. Literally a treasure chest of information. And I got to practice my jump backs and throughs. I will master you yet! Funny, the Travis set has helped give me more strength and stamina for the primary which is a nice bonus. I'm actually not surprised as I thought it might.

Hmmm, I don't think I was successful in keeping it short. Oh well!

So, it's been a good week so far and it's just past hump day! Now it's all down hill from here. Weeee!

... practice, schedule ~ do whatever works ~ and all is coming.

I Want to Look Like This!

I want to look like this coming out of bhujipidasana and supta kurmasana!

Is it wrong??? I can look like that when doing the old faithful crow. It never lets me down. And jumping back from that is a weeeee! So much fun. But doing it from bhuji and supta makes a fool out of me. Instead, even if I get into bhuji right my stamina is so spent that I can't barely get out for flopping. Then when I exit from supta kurmasana my exit is the novice way where my knees are flopping off the sides of my arms in a very cumbersome manner that it's practically impossible to jump back. I need to get to the core of things and find core lift to be able to get the knees higher. But by this time my stamina is at an all time low so I can't do bhuji and the exits out of it justice. Yet the whole point IS in building that stamina, which of course, as I said before, is not my strong point. Oh well, so much to learn in ashtanga that it's probably why I keep on coming back to the mat.

Practice and all is coming ...