Tools of the trade

#goodMorningSunshine ?
#morningsAreBeautiful ?
#rituals of #theBeautifulJourney

This was the week of switching to a program designed by someone else. I went for Heather Robertson‘s 7 day program on top of which I’ve added the muscle isolate burn sessions and the dancing. Heather also has a 12 week program (5 days/week) so it will be easy to just continue with her and also have the opportunity to do some of my other favourite workouts to fill all the days in the week. Heather’s sessions have music throughout and timers, which make them quite nice. I’ve discovered some fun music through these workouts.

On the yoga front I’ve discovered so many courses I want to do! So far this week I’ve worked on strength and stability, the importance of grounding, relaxation and flexibility for power.

The classes offer a story, the discussion of the poses and how their practice relates to our nervous system and who we are, who we can become, how we want to carry ourselves through the world, which I really love. And the pace of the class allows for increased body and mind awareness.

One of the many things that stayed with me after this class is the thought that it takes a certain kind of strength to relax. Think about it! 

This topic also reminded me of David Allen’s book – Getting Things Done (for which I haven’t yet written a blog post) where we are reminded again that our ability to generate power is directly proportional to our ability to relax.

One can think of building strength and stability within the yoga practice for the yoga practice, but yoga can be seen as a foundation for or a supplement to other sports.

The flexibility, the ability to relax and coordinate breath and movement, the body awareness can enhance any other sports practice one does. I found yoga instructors that are also rock climbers, doing their ‘yoga for climbers’ series. I found yoga for heavy weight lifters or runners and most workouts out there have at least some warm up or cool down containing yoga poses.

Today I’ll show you some of the tools of the trade:

• • my notebook for the daily intention setting
  • my new yoga socks for chilly mornings
  • the foam roller which I started using more this week. Oh, good, sweet pain!
  • the resistance bands that provide a low impact variation to getting your muscle to activate more
  • the spiky massage bals that I use mostly for my feet and sometimes glutes
  • the yoga block that I use in e.g. inversion poses or for inner thigh exercises in bridge pose
  • weights for the upper body/chest exercises. So far I have not added any actual weights on them, as you can see, but they are heavy enough as they are (but don’t know how much they weigh)

Nevertheless, I can now do a few triceps/military style push ups. Still working on the standard ones…

Ah, this reminded me I don’t know how much I weigh either. I don’t have a scale and didn’t get into the habit of checking my weight. I can usually notice pretty quickly (e.g. a week) if I gain weight. A topic for another time!

Until next time … relax!

This has been week #9 of daily exercise started during lockdown.
#theBeautifulJourneyWithiuliana