One Year Of Yoga

The benefits of pet ownership to one’s mental, emotional, and physical well-being are numerous. Pets have been medically proven to reduce their owners’ stress, lower cholesterol and triglyceride levels, and alleviate the loneliness that even the most social of humans feel from time to time. And research shows that people who own dogs get significantly more exercise than people who don’t.

Walking the dog for even 30 minutes twice a day can really add up—that’s a total of 7 hours of exercise per week! That figure is even more stunning if you consider that the majority of Americans spends only 0-2 hours per week walking, running, or at the gym. And that 7 hours of exercise per week doesn’t count the weekend runs, games of frisbee, and hours of play in the family rec room that a fun-loving pup demands.

But for an ever-increasing number of pet owners across the country, old-fashioned activity just isn’t enough for their modern dogs in this modern age.

Enter: doga. You heard me, that’s doga—yoga for dogs.

via Downward-Facing Dog: Adventures in ‘Pets-ercise’ — ZooToo Pet News.

Good class. The instructor changed the last two poses which is not really what Bikram teaches, but I think it was good to do. She had us do lizard pose, then splits, then pigeon pose, then final spinal twist. These are all good stretches that I like to do to improve my flexibility. It was a nice flow to do them this way.

Today’s class was nice because you could actually see the ocean from the studio on the beach. I was encouraged to take this class by a friend so it is always fun to join friends in class. We did some arm weights and other movement in addition to the yoga poses. It was a good change of pace.

It was nice to teach again. I have not taught a class in about 2 years, but it came back to me relatively easy. I only felt stuck once when I almost skipped separate leg stretching pose and started to go into triangle. One of the regular students reminded me and I quickly went back to separate leg stretching. The students were very nice. They all appreciated me teaching the class and did not mind that I felt a little rusty. Maui is very laid back. A little different than the mainland. Anyway, I will be happy to sub for the studio again.

Today I went back to the Yoga and Kick-boxing Studio, to get more of a feel of it before I teach on Saturday. Yikes! I’m a little nervous about it since I have not taught in a while. It should be fun though. The class today seemed to move well and I really pushed myself in the poses. It felt good to sweat!

Today I found a new studio in Kihei. This one said it had Bikram classes online, but it was not on the Bikram website, so I went not sure of what I would find. It was only a 15 minute drive which is much better than driving to Kahului. The studio is a Yoga and Kick-boxing studio and apparently the guy who teaches the kick-boxing was a Champion. His partner is a Bikram yoga teacher from Long Island. She had several Bikram studio’s there. The inside was painted blue with dolphins and there’s a Shiva painted on the wall as well. They let yoga music continue to play when they started the class and the kick-boxer James, inserted a couple yoga poses he wanted everyone to do. It was a fun class and after it was done I told the owner I was a certified Bikram teacher and I just moved back. She said, “I had been praying for you this week. I need someone to teach on Saturday.” How could I refuse when someone puts it like that? I will be teaching a class here on Saturday morning.

I LOVE APPLE products, particularly the fabulous and affordable health and fitness applications you can download on your iPhone or iPod touch.Sure, you dont need them, but they are cool, fun and may be just the motivational tools to take your fitness up a few notches.For more than a year now, Ive been encouraging everyone who has access to this technology to take advantage of these great apps, especially, the FREE ones.

via Kimberly Garrison: iPhone apps will polish your workout & diet | Philadelphia Daily News | 02/11/2010.

She recommends an app called “yoga RELAX”.  Sounds fun to check out.

I tried it again today. I was even worse. I started out good, but by the end I started a Yin type class when I got to the floor poses. My mind started to drift and I held some poses a long time while I was thinking of what I had to do that day. I think tomorrow I need to go to a studio.

Yesterday I drove to the Kahului Bikram studio which is about a 40 minute trip. I did not anticipate the road construction I ran into, so I was 5 minutes late and the door was locked. So instead, I did my Costco shopping, which paid off because they had some composters in! I picked one up because it was the exact model I had been looking for. This will work well for us since we want to start a nice garden and the key to a healthy garden is nutrient rich compost. Not to mention the amount of waste this will reduce!

Today, I practiced at home because it is such a far drive to the studio. I didn’t have the heat, but that was OK. I can see now that the problem doing it at home for me is I tend to shorten the time I hold the poses. I found myself counting to 20 instead of 30 seconds. Oh well, more time to work on my garden!

The P90X Videos have a strictly yoga class. My husband and I did this one together. It was similar to a tough Vinyasa Class I’ve had. I was actually very impressed with the flow of the poses and definitely felt like I had a good workout when I was done.  It seemed like we hit all my favorite poses.  He called crow pose by a different name.  I’m not sure if different people have different names for the poses, or if he just mixed up the names.  There was definitely a different feeling doing it our living room. Yoga studio’s are more conducive to a meditative practice.