Yoga and excuses

It’s the end of yet another week. I find that time has been flying by recently – me and my housemate Kathryn have both said that it feels like January exams were only last week.

This week was a bit odd, I’m feeling slightly under the weather and that, together with the pressure of upcoming deadlines, meant I haven’t been out running. I’m hoping to go tomorrow but I guess it depends on whether I come up with an excuse. Everyday yoga practise also went down the drain due to various reasons last week but I have improved again this week.

Last night I decided to play around with my yoga practise a little. I’ve had a productive yet fairly relaxed day and didn’t really feel like I wanted to stop and breathe for a minute like I usually do when I get to the evening. I wanted to try something new and push myself a little bit.

There is plenty of yoga inspiration on the internet – particularly on Instagram. I love browsing through random photos under yoga hashtags. I think #yogaeverydamnday is my favourite because many of the captions describe the journeys of amateurs like myself. And yes, of course, there are plenty of qualified yoga teachers posting pictures too, but it’s the amateur posts that really motivate me. I find it so inspiring to see people who, similarly to me, are struggling with something as simple as touching their toes and their progress to being able to do all kinds of weird and wonderful poses.

A few weeks ago I started focusing more on my hamstrings and hips as I figured out that that’s where the tightness, which prevented me from touching my toes, was. Although touching my toes while standing is still a challenge and requires preparation, it is starting to become more doable. My yoga teacher was definitely right (not that I ever doubted it) when she said that practising everyday will fast-forward the progress but to be honest, I didn’t think it would be this fast. As I see these little bit of progress though, I am getting more ambitious. Yesterday I decided to take a more holistic approach and push myself out of my comfort zone with all body parts. I started practising some gentle back bends – bridge, fish and wheel poses plus a few others. I do however try to make sure I don’t push myself too far and don’t try to force anything – this is also a great exercise for my patience. I think that is the main rule for me when practising yoga. I am also very keen to learn a headstand without support, just in the middle of my mat. I don’t find it too problematic to get into the position however staying in it and not flipping over definitely is problematic. My balance is atrocious. Upper body strength has also been on my radar for a while and it is taking soooo long to build up. I find that the transition from child pose to cobra really gets my shoulders working so I try to do that quite a few times every day. I also attempted crow pose. Here is a picture of my pathetic, poor quality and probably dangerous attempt that my mum managed to capture (top photography skills there as I can only stay up for about 3 seconds). 

Finally yesterday I also managed to do a beginner variation of pigeon pose which I got very excited about but unfortunately I didn’t capture it on camera :(.