SUP, doc?

 Did you know it was dear old Bugs' 75th birthday this week? Me either, but let me take this as an opportunity to dole out a huge load of congratulations to various Bears before I get on to the topic of this post:

- to Sarah, who is both a newly-graduated doctor AND completed Castle Howard Tri (you see what I did there?)

- to Cathy on completing her very first triathlon at Salford despite the horrible weather (bells and whistles much in evidence as me and the kids made some noise for her!)

- to the incredible and redoubtable Sid Sidowski & family who not only completed the full Outlaw Tri on a bloody BMX and in a morph suit!!!! but has, at my last check, raised over £3.5k for Birmingham Children's Hospital. I salute you, sir, you are AMAZEBALLS.

- to our very own Team Bear relay squad at Outlaw (including Rach doing the swim of her life in an incredible 1.02hr) and all of you guys who competed individually and as teams at Outlaw, ThunderRun, Castle Howard and oh god, so many places I've lost count.You're all ace and I'm privileged to know you and cheer you.

Right, ok. Now the reason for the terrible pun in the title.

On the way home from Salford Tri on Sunday, it occured to me that the kids were heading up to stay at Grandma's this week, and that whilst I have more than enough work to be going on with, it's all office hours work. That leaves my evenings footloose and fancy-free, as it were. You know me, if I can get near water, I will do. But I didn't want to "just" swim. And I didn't want to "just" do yoga, much as I'm loving having a more regular practice at the moment. And I wanted to do something more fun than run, though I've just started training again and it's going ok. Maybe I could go kayaking again. I wondered if Cathy or Rach were around for some kind of adventure.

Then it hit me: there's a very interesting little flyer attached to my fridge, from a very interesting and sweet lady we met at Trafford Water Park a couple of months ago.

It means I can get on the water (I do love to paddle!) and I can do yoga. On Tuesday night.

Some very excited emails and texts and Twitter messages flew around, and suddenly Cathy and I were booked onto a class with Magda at loveanddo YOGA to do...

Stand Up Paddleboard Yoga.

What?

Yes. You paddle out into the middle of the lake on an oversized surfboard and then do yoga. On the board. Whilst it's bobbling about in the wind and waves. Need I explain this activity appeared first in nice warm places like Hawaii and California? Not in the North West of England?

I'd never paddleboarded before, but I am getting quite good at standing balance poses - I've been practicing hard after a disastrous session of mawashi geri (round kick) drills a couple of weeks ago, and it does seem to be helping. Eh, I figured, how different can standing up to paddle be to sitting in a 2-man canoe trying to make sure your 9yo doesn't have you spinning in circles? And my Warrior 3 pose is really coming along. It'll be grand.

So Tuesday rolled around and it threw it down. Not quite in IronMan proportions, but enough to be seriously worried that the whole thing would be cancelled. Magda, magician that she is, had assured us the weather would clear after 5pm and blow me down if she wasn't absolutely right. The rain stopped just as I turned off the M60 and pulled into the Water Park. It was still quite breezy - again, not up to Bala standards but at least a Force 3; trees constantly moving, flags out, occasional scattered whitecaps.

Yes, I realise I'm slightly obsessed with wind speeds at the moment, it's a useful skill. Bite me. And make sure you read Loneswimmer's How To Understand The Beaufort Scale.

Just about ready to push the board off and climb on. 

The orange ropes have anchors on for the actual yoga session.

 

I dithered a great deal about what to wear, having packed my wetsuit, Dryrobe, kayaking gear and my running kit in case I had chance for a lap of the lake afterwards. In the end  I plumped for my UV-protective kayaking top and a pair of running tights. A rather sausagey effect, but who cares: I could move easily and I'd dry out fast if I went in. I like as little clothing bulk under a life jacket as possible, and I would say that was the only niggle about the whole experience - it was quite annoying and next time I'd take it off. But if you're not a strong swimmer and confident paddler, leave it on. In addition, the lake at Trafford does get beautifully warm; I'd guess at at least 22oC in places. But again, it's what you're used to and if you've little open water experience be guided by your teacher and put on a wetsuit if necessary. Cathy rocked up in her brand new Salford Triathlon t-shirt and a great big grin - no wetsuit required to keep her warm!

I actually look quite competent in this picture...

  

Cathy and I were joined by another two women, and we had about 15mins practice on the paddleboards. The paddles were a bit too short for standing up and it really was quite windy, so mostly we knelt, and when that got too much for me I sat cross-legged like a happy little Buddha. We got blown right down the lake when we all tried standing up and almost had a run-in with the same fisherman we'd upset the second time we went kayaking, but Magda got us all turned around and headed back up near to the main building. It was a little wobbly, standing up, but I quickly found my balance and got to know the board's centre. At this point we really struggled to get anchored - the bottom of the lake is thick with weed and mud and fairly shallow just there - but eventually the five of us were settled and ready to begin.

We started with calming and centreing our breath, just like any yoga practice. Then some cat-and-cow poses, which were a great way to get a feel as to how the board moves as you move. Some waves did splash over a little, which made lying down poses a bit damp, but I also picked up a tiny caterpillar who did some rather good poses of his own!

 

 We even got some sunshine!

Downward Dog felt great straightaway and within a few of these transitions I felt very much at home on the board and in no danger of falling off. Then we moved on to Sun Salutations, which I'm familiar with but aren't part of my usual practice. They involved quite a bit of standing up and getting back down again. This was no problem in terms of balance, but it did take some concentration to make sure my hands and feet were going back onto the board in a centred way, especially since the boards appeared to be actually windsurf boards and you had to be careful not to sit on the slightly sticking-up bit for the sail!

 Not sure why my board had drifted so far forwards there, but don't we look good!

One of the huge selling points for SUP yoga is that you're forced to be absolutely in the moment all of the time you're out there. There's no space for your mind to wander off into making shopping lists or wondering what you're going to have for tea, and there's definitely no room for fretting about whether your bum looks big in this. So if you have trouble switching off from daily life whenever you try yoga, this is one way to stop that. A little extreme, perhaps, but a superb way of breaking out of a rut.

Taking a Child's Pose and feeling peaceful

So is it hard? Well, everyone will vary depending on their experience, but I can honestly say that once I'd made peace with having slightly slower, more deliberate transitions (no bad thing), I really didn't find it any more difficult than land-based yoga, only having trouble with Half Lord Of The Fishes because seated twists are hard enough for me anyway without a life jacket on (and the irony of that pose name in the face of Trafford's giant catfish myths is not lost, believe me). In fact both Cathy and I agreed that there were points where we both completely forgot we were on a paddleboard. The wind and the waves, and the sound of the trees (and ok, the sound of traffic on the M60); the blue sky and scudding clouds above (and yes, the pylons and cables); the sunshine and the scent of the warm water, plus the odd honking goose...these added a completely different dimension to my practice. Especially from upside down! I honestly can't think of a better way to finish a session in savasana than lying with your fingers and toes trailing in the water, looking up at a blue evening sky. It may not be Hawaii, but it's still beautiful.

I definitely want to go again. It's expensive for a session (or at least for me, who earns very little!), but if you're an "experiences over things" person, this is one to savour.

SUP Yoga class was provided by Magda at loveanddo YOGA (@loveanddoyoga on Twitter and on Facebook) at Trafford Water Park. Sessions cost £25 and run at Trafford, Salford Watersports Centre and in Liverpool. I was not paid to write this post or given any written content to add; many thanks to Cathy and to Magda for the photos which were shared freely.

Janathon Week 3

 Third time's the charm?

The derailment continues. Thundersnow is apparently a thing, and it happened to us a week last Friday. Except here being here, it wasn't snow, it was 2ins of hail, which promptly went into the usual thaw-refreeze cycle. So running was right out because I don't have any ice skates and it was patchy enough to make YakTrax impractical. I had to wear hiking boots for the school run most of the next week as it then snowed on top of it. I also haven't completely shaken the horrible cold; it's actually come back and settled in my throat and lungs. Between the ice and that it's been hard to do more than I'd usually do, so I've spent some of the last week catching up on the remedial stretching and yoga I should be doing for my feet and hips. I'm trying to be ok with it - last year and the year before, ice and illness stopped me running completely. This year I'm viewing it as a blip in the schedule, not a dead loss.

However, we've had some really bright spots this weekend and that makes up for everything!

Friday 16th: 1hr 20 Yin Yoga: I'd been promising myself this session for a while but had to cut it short a bit as I was anxious about getting to school in bad weather, particularly since I'd promised to pick up one of the neighbour kids too.

Saturday 17th: Karate: Felt much better and spent some of my time working on doing combinations whilst sparring with the little ones - making sure I complete a block with a reverse punch, that kind of thing. Not doing terribly well with my kata, but it's early days yet.

Sunday 18th: The roads were scarily icy so I skipped USWIM with a heavy heart and worked through some Hatha for the core and spine.

Monday 19th: Too icy for running, too bored of yoga, so worked on my kata for a while. I forget how much hard work it is even when you do it really slowly!

Tuesday 20th: A real low with the head cold and weather: a 30s plank. Nice to know I can still pull that out of the bag whenever, though.

Wednesday 21st: Karate: hideous but fun; mostly due to a tough warm-up. Cheers, 8yo Cadet Leader.

Thursday 22nd: USWIM Blackburn: A really satisfying session; I feel like I'm improving every week and starting to get an actual feel for the water rather than wallowing through it. My timed 750m was 20s slower than last time but I'm not dissatisfied with that - different pool, different lane mates, and a cold. Still under 16min so I'll take it!

Friday 23rd: An overly busy day so just 10mins of Hatha for the feet - it turns out if you do Downward Dog with your feet braced against the wall, it hurts almost as much as Broken Toe pose.

Saturday 24th: On Thursday, Youngest (4yo) announced that she'd decided she wanted to be a Cadet Leader, which completely took me by surprise - Eldest has never shown any interest (she prefers not to be the centre of attention, she says). Sure enough she went and asked Sensei before class on Saturday, who took her at her word and let her try out. For that I'll be forever grateful, whatever Youngest decides in the future. So picture my tiny daughter at the front of a class of thirty-odd students, every single one older than her by a significant amount, all grades, lots of adults - and she took us all through the regular stretching routine with barely any help. Clear, loud enough without shouting, completely confident - I was absolutely blown away. So were we all. She got a huge round of applause afterwards and is looking forward to doing it all over again! She won't be able to take part in Cadet Leader classes for a while as she's just not physically big enough. I don't know if that'll put her off or give her focus: whatever happens, I hope she's understood that she has every right to give things a try.

Awarded by the whole class!

On Saturday afternoon lovely Rach came to visit as Eldest is due to take her ASA Level 7 Swimming Award soon and had asked for some help with her butterfly. It was a fairly quiet "kids' fun session", so there was much larking around on floats and trying to unglue Youngest from the wall (she's just come out of her armbands and lacks confidence), but I think some progress was made in both butterfly and freestyle.

 

Our Sunday lake swim deserves a post and photos all of it's own, so tune in later for "how I screwed up and still got a temp PB".

Janathon Week 2

Ah, the traditional Janathon set-back bites me on the arse again, but thankfully just a nibble so far. Lots on my mind this week, for various reasons - I've had some hibernating days, some down days, some shut-up-and-get-on-with-it days and a day feeling like I'd been hit in the face by a snow shovel thanks to a sinus infection. I've done more laundry than any one household should ever have to do. Still struggling with sleep - I have a really peculiar form of insomnia that I can't seem to find by Googling: I fall asleep fairly easily, have vivid dreams for ten minutes, then wake myself up somehow (often by pointing out a logical inconsistency within the dream). Then I'm wide awake for ages. It's so frustrating. It only used to happen when I went to bed too early - for me that's before midnight - and now it's any time I go to bed. I can't fathom it out. It leaves me very tired and prone to dozing off during the morning if I get even slightly comfortable. The cat sitting on my lap is fatal - one purr and I'm out for the count.

I have managed most of what I set out to do this week; I'm down one karate and one run, both due to the sinus infection. Having to sit out of karate whilst the girls were sparring was one of the most frustrating and tedious things I've done in ages. I couldn't do much more than curl up against the wall, pathetically mainline Strepsils, and hope I wasn't too cross-eyed to drive them home afterwards; but I still wanted to damn well get up there with my mitts and pads on and try to get the better of someone. Bah.

This week:
Fri 9th: 30mins Vinyasa Flow Yoga: Tadasana to Warrior 3 on physio's instructions to do more balancing.

Sat 10th: Karate: loads of circuit training and feeling unhappy with my kata (currently Heian Yondan). I really need to get on with the home study.

Sun 11th: USWIM Manchester: working hard and feeling good; included a timed 750m at 15.32 - not stellar but a big improvement for me. And lane leader for a while without getting my toes tapped! 1.6km and really missing that last half-hour the pool management have nicked off us :(

Mon 12th: Run: Roughly C25k wk5 powered by hate and spite - I SO wasn't in the mood but I figured I may as well make it as hard as possible so ran up a 10% hill into a headwind. Not quite the 5/5/5 min splits I was going for - made it in 3.5/4.5/15, so longer and harder than planned. I'll take it. Three years ago I was knackered just walking up that hill. 3 miles in total including the warm-up and walking breaks.

Tue 13th: 1hr Yin for runners, aaaaah. Much appreciated and nowhere near as sore as the first run.

Wed 14th: Death. Slept for a solid four hours during the day, so no run, and had to sit out of karate. Did ten minutes of Restorative Yoga before bed to get the kinks out of my neck and shoulders. And because Janathon.

Thu 15th: USWIM Blackburn: ye gods and little fishes, quite possibly the hardest set I've ever done - virtually all sprint work. Absolutely exhausting and yet, here I am, still alive, slightly faster and with almost-clear sinuses. Witchcraft, I tell you. 2.2km all told.

Tomorrow depends on the weather. I neeeeeed a good long session of yoga (and by that I mean 90mins) but I should also crowbar a run in there, and I'm in school all morning. We shall see.


The Christmas chocolate is all gone. This is probably a good thing.

Janathon Week 1

 I do love my enormous Tyr bag. It's so comfy to carry and I can take ALL the things.

I was in my girls' school this afternoon (I do volunteer reading help with a couple of classes) and overheard the Juniors' assembly. It was all about New Year's Resolutions and how it's ok to fail and try again and make a new resolution any time of the year. I thought that was a really nice thing to make clear to the kids early on and it was worth hearing the message myself, too.

My first week of Janathon hasn't been as badly derailed as last year's was. I have had a day being very off-colour when I'd planned to run, and a few mornings where I've just desperately needed to hibernate in the quiet. I've accrued quite the sleep-debt (if that is a real thing and not a myth), and trying to force my natural 10am-2am bodyclock back to 7am-12am has been torturous. The kids are shattered too, although gleeful to be back with their school and sports friends. We also had a disaster on Monday night when the washing machine took the final revenge and covered all three white karate gis in horrendous brown streaks, creating one panicked 2am order of a new machine (arrives Friday) and a sad little plea to our sensei for new gis. Which, stunningly, she managed to get hold of for us before our Wednesday class. How awesome is that! So washing kit has been a problem and the Christmas laundry backlog is laughing in my face.

However, I have managed to do something reasonable every day, which breaks down like this:

Thu 1st: 1hr Yin Yoga (supine focus)
Fri 2nd: 20mins Hatha Yoga (pre-bed relaxation)
Sat 3rd: Ran a mile with Eldest in 10m 49s
Sun 4th: USWIM Manchester, 2.6km of ALL THE DRILLS EVER OMG SO MUCH SINGLE-ARM
Mon 5th: 1hr Yin Yoga (evening practice)
Tue 6th: 1hr Yin Yoga (sthira sukham asanam/steadiness & sweetness)
Wed 7th: 1hr Karate (lots of fitness work, stances and kata with a little sparring)
Thu 8th: USWIM Blackburn, 1.6km of even more drills and some sprints. Much easier than Sunday, and although I'm rubbish at tracking these things, I do think my speed over 100m has improved again - below 2mins, don't think I've ever been there before.

There ought to be at least one more run in there, but eh, at least I did something and I feel better in the hips and back than I did last week, which can only be good. I plan to do some more challenging yoga over the next few days - any day I can do, I will do (because every day is too much pressure but I like it so much that I kick myself if it gets more than a couple of days between sessions), and hopefully at least two sessions each of run/swim/karate as appropriate. Next week I need to start reining in my post-Christmas chocolate munching. Cos it's nearly all gone.

In other news, I GOT A DRYROBE! This is ace and I can't wait for the next winter swim.

It's that time again...Janathon!

And we're back! Happy 2015, everyone, and if you haven't signed up for Janathon yet, hop to it. The rules have changed a little this year and you don't need to blog every day! Tweeting counts, hurrah.

Last year I was the last member of the family to succumb to the vomiting bug on New Year's Day, and thankfully it hasn't nabbed us this year (well - some of us had it in late Nov/early Dec and it could still hit us again, no chicken counting here!). I did feel kinda seedy after some enthusiastically alcoholic seeing in of the New Year and a whole lot of travelling over the last week, but a good session of Yin Yoga has sorted me right out. It's obvious I've been slacking, though, so my plan is to do yoga for the next few days to loosen myself up, then we're back into the usual round of Masters USWIM and karate five days a week, with yoga whenever I can fit it in. I saw my physio before Christmas to get my shonky hips and knees checked out, and it sounds like the usual hip flexor tightness and weakness on the left that's plagued me for years. So yin yoga and balance-based yoga need to feature highly this month. Also apparently my feet are "a bit wrong" so that'll need work too.

Plans for the year include but are not limited to:

- Swim a 10km event (mostly likely Bala two-way with the BLDSA, of which I'm now a member, and I'd love to do Kielder Water too) and probably a bunch of USWIM events

- Get my purple belt and be working towards purple/white

- Run a 10km event. Oh dear, what have I let myself in for with that! I have a rough plan to do it by the end of April. We'll see. I had a test run before xmas and I can still do a mile in about 9mins (albeit downhill), so that's something to build on.

- Support all our Team Bear members at Ironman UK - loads of our kids are doing the IronKids race, including my girls (and me, since Youngest has to be accompanied!); and wave pompoms for our Ironman nutters.

I'll probably end up doing a whole bunch of other stuff, and that's half the fun! In the meantime, have a horrible pun:

The teacher I like the most on YogaGlo tends to say "Yogi's choice" when there are multiple adjustments to a pose. So, I'm a Yogi. In Team Bear.

Clearly, I am Yogi Bear!

So...this happened.

  

Team Bear Tri

I seem to have been adopted! I'm still a little bemused and bowled over even a week or so later, partly by the sheer enormity of the digital hug that is Team Bear, and partly from an unsubtle dose of imposter syndrome. Patrick summed it up really well recently in this piece for H2Open: Am I A Proper Swimmer?. I think it's a feeling most people run into from time to time so I'm trying not to take it too seriously. Debates about the definition of "ultraswimmer" aside*, crossing Coniston has put me in a fairly small group of distance-capable swimmers, and I'm still getting my head around the reaction of people who don't swim a great deal. It still doesn't seem that far to me when I hang out with Windermere soloists and Channellists at USWIM.

Anyway, I suddenly have a zillion new and awesome people to follow on Twitter, lots of interesting conversations to have, enormous amounts of cheerleading and Kermit flailing to do, cake recipes to swap, and hopefully folks to duck drown throw into taunt bribe with cake introduce to open water. I still think it's unlikely I'll ever do a tri - the hills and narrow roads where I live are really quite intimidating for a newbie cyclist - but I'm content to be a long-distance swimmer, amateur runner and triathlon groupie! We (see, it's the royal we, now, cos we are Team Bear) will have some participants in IronManUK in Bolton next year, so I will almost certainly be hopping over the hill to provide screaming and cake. I'm definitely talented at that bit. My kids are even talking about doing the IronKids race and asking for Team Bear "Cub Strip". All very exciting.


Speaking of being in a small minority, this also happened:

Big thank you to Carl at @hypehairdarwen for the four hours of patience it takes to put that lot in!

This is the third time I've had mermaid greens put in, this time with some blues, and I'm as delighted as ever. The green is particularly long-lasting in my hair despite - or perhaps because of - the chlorine. You very rarely see greens and it does turn a few heads, but I guess the school run folks are used to my odd taste by now. There were many admiring noises at Salford Quays on Saturday, which was fun. So sad to be near the end of the season, although there are super-amazing Winter sessions to look forward to - including a Victorian themed dip in December for which I'm making a costume (or three, depending on how easy it is and how big the bribes are) modelled after an 1880s style outfit with bloomers and all. When I start making it I'll put some progress pics on my other blog Sea and Wood. I appear to have broken all the photos on there, bear with me.

This week(ish) I have:

- Brought my Aspire Challenge total up to 7.3 miles; a combination of working on my technique and bobbling about at Quays with friends - I have a rotten neckache from all the head-up breaststroke but it's been so worth it to just play in the water with no training pressure.

- Three sessions of karate in which I have my kicking legs back! I fell off the pontoon at Quays about five weeks ago and massively bruised my left leg to the point that Coniston was in doubt for a bit. I haven't been able to spar properly in a month or so, which has sucked in terms of fun, but I think it's made me more aware of how I use my punches and how much I depend on that left leg. All very educational.

- Been out for a run twice more, trying to balance the combination of disappointment that I'm not amazing right out of the box with surprise and pleasure that actually, I can run a mile without stopping and nearly two if I take a wee break for the vicious humpbacked bridge in the middle.

- Re-committed to a regular yoga practice. I did my very own little Julyathon and practiced every day, but it wasn't so easy to do with the kids off all Summer. Now I can go back to it, but I'm not going to beat myself up if I have a day off here and there. I would really, really rate YogaGlo for a home practice. For me it's well worth the subscription fee - much as I miss Jane's classes I now have access to lots of fantastic Yin-style classes by Felicia Tomasko which have undone a lot of my troubles. I also love David Harsharda Wagner's meditation classes.


So yeah...been a pretty darn good week for sports!


* I think it means the same as for running, ie anything further than marathon distance, which for swimmers is 6 mi/10k and that's the yardstick I judge myself by - but I also think that sea swims like EC, Triple Crown, Ocean's Seven etc deserve a special category of their own because the degree of difficulty is so much higher. Certain members of Team Bear loudly argue that the definition is "a bloody long way so shut up", and I'm going to leave it at that!

When The Stars Align

Often the Devil farts in my face, to quote Blackadder, as it did at the beginning of the year. But sometimes the stars align and you get what you've been looking for. I've always wanted to learn the slow form of Tai Chi to go alongside martial arts. We even took a few lessons when we lived in Manchester but sadly the instructor had a very heavy accent which made things difficult. I'd really love to learn the full practice with swords and everything, actually, but the opportunity isn't there right now. I've bought videos, always kept an ear out for classes, but I guess I've never been at a point in my life where I could make room for it. Practicing both yoga and karate has drawn me back into a regular meditation practice, which is really helping in the off-season for OW. I have a vile temper (just ask the kids where they get it from), but these sports and habits are helping to get back on top of it. By the time I get back to doing 4km outdoors every week I should be the most laid-back person on the planet ;-)

This morning I was walking Youngest to preschool when I spotted, in the freezing wind and incoming rain, a man practicing Tai Chi at Ashleigh Barrow (what a wonderful place to practice!). When I got home I opened an email from Amazon reminding me I'd been looking at DVDs a few weeks ago - I hadn't made a decision because the reviews were so mixed. Shrugging - I knew neither of the classes available locally were at times I could get to - I laid out my mat and pulled up a yoga programme I'd had for ten years. I didn't like it half so much as classes, which surprised me because I'd always found it reliable. It was too fast, if you can believe that; it felt like there was no time to get into the postures fully and no sense of progression. Jane's classes have wonderful flow and everything feels connected, not just isolated postures that are somehow "good for trimming the waist". Perhaps that's why I never really persisted before. I did half an hour, anyway and then turned it off, ready to lie down for savasana, when I suddenly spotted a Tai Chi DVD in my collection. I don't even remember getting it. But when you get the stars clicking into place like that, you have to give it a go, don't you! It was lovely. There's so much I recognise from karate and yoga that it all makes sense now. I can feel where my balance should be, and although the presenter has a much easier to understand voice and style of teaching, I can still hear that original teacher saying "chi up...chi down" as I practice. So I look forward to learning a new skill!


In other news karate is going fine - the blocks in my kata are still  muddled but I've time to fix that yet. Yoga is lovely but I am troubled by something Jane said last week - she came to help whilst I was working on a leg raised posture and it seems I was hyperextending my knee. So I need a lot more clarification on when I'm supposed to lock my legs out and what it feels like to not do that. It is painful and I need to be sure I'm not making a huge mistake when doing, say, box splits at karate. Youngest is loving Yogabugs still but I'm not sure where to go with her from there; there aren't any classes for kids here that I know of.

I've been skiving on swimming. I just can't face the public pool at the moment and USWIM was cancelled last week, so it's been nearly a fortnight. Still, back in the saddle on Sunday with any luck. Running can sod off. It's way too cold and wet!

Hanumanasana: The Leap of Faith

So this is what we were working towards today

Lovely photo from yogajournal.com - great resource!

.

I can't even straighten my legs properly, the hamstrings and backs of my knees are too tight. Locking them out whilst standing is out of the question. Hanumanasana or "monkey pose" is so far out of my league right now that it's not funny. I mean, I know yoga is progressive but I'm not going to get anywhere near that for a long time yet. It puts my frustration with the box splits into perspective, though - at least I'm getting somewhere with that!

Hanumanasana is called "monkey pose" not because you look like a monkey, but because it mimics the Hindu god Hanuman, who once took a giant leap from the southern tip of India to the island of Sri Lanka to rescue Sita. So it's to do with taking a leap of faith. It is an advanced posture, so none of us were even remotely close to it, but all the postures working up to the full split are very useful for someone like me, since my major aim with yoga is to unlock these dratted hamstrings of mine. And I guess you gotta have faith that you'll get there one day. It was testing and actually kind of emotional.

In other news, Jane had very kindly sorted out some postures for me to strengthen and improve the flexibility in the sides of my hips, so I need to commit to daily practice of those so that I can do kicks at karate without worrying my entire leg is going to flick out of the joint. Yay?

Worry

A lovely flowing practice today; pity I was so unfocused. We're worrying about Youngest at the moment as she appears to have some joint problems which could be hypermobility. Usually I'm pretty good at doing the research, then switching off and just dealing with these things as they come up (she has a GP appt next week) because I simply don't believe in worrying at something you can't fix, but I couldn't. It's understandable, if frustrating; we haven't had any major (hell, even minor) health issues to worry about since Eldest gave us a huge scare in NICU eight years ago. If we catch it early enough it shouldn't be limiting for her, though, and exercise is positively encouraged.. It was difficult to come out of savasana this time. I think my brain was relieved to shut up for a while! I hate being unfocused, it feels disrespectful to my teacher and to my practice.

On the bright side Youngest has fallen in love with our Yogabugs DVD, and does what she can manage and feels like doing. It helps that it's the "Under The Sea" version; she's a huge Octonauts fan.

I asked Jane for some help with hip strengthening exercises and she thinks she can help. That's one less thing to fret about, anyway!

When You Get There

I've been really busy working on other projects tonight - it's got horribly late without my realising, so I will have to skip the whole pull-ups thing and save them for after tomorrow's swim. Lovely.

Yoga today was again challenging with some poses which were really a lot harder than they usually are. I'm not sure why, something feels off down my right side - still working on that hip recovery, I suspect. I enjoyed it, even so, and there was some great work on the meditative aspects of overruling the body and mind's chatter. Overruling is the wrong word, I think - just letting the chatter float on by, which chimed with something I was reading in Buddhism for Mothers of Young Children last night. So lots to think about, rather than a physically demanding practice today.

Ten Tigers

Well, I don't know about ten. But it did take me a certain amount of courage to get out there last night, and to make it to yoga this morning. My hip was agonising when I got up, and we overslept into the bargain, so there was much hobbling and grumping about (sorry, kids) first thing. I think I need to put a big "BREATHE!" sign over the bed or something.

Challenging practice this morning - not only was I working through the DOMS in my thighs and the dodgy hip but my shoulders felt quite frozen up and the twists were difficult. My hip seems lots better now, though - for a while there I was quite worried because we were doing a lot of hip openers. The usual places I can get to just felt too painful and so I used the blocks a lot at first and concentrated on breathing into the posture rather than getting there without trying like I usually can. Probably better for me, in the end, particularly since I was too busy thinking about how to get there without hurting myself to have any performance issues! But my Tree Pose (Vrksasana) felt really good - stretching in all the right places, no balance issues, nice and stable. I've always loved that one.

It's a program night so pull-ups, press-ups and planks later on. I think I am starting to make a little progress with the pull-ups - half the battle is working out how to do it. Looking forward to karate tomorrow - Sensei promised special attention to kata and kicks, which I know is an area I need to work on. And yet another review of my contact lenses in the afternoon - I've now tried three different kinds and they're still not doing the job for me. They really shouldn't be blurring so much and they feel gritty all the time they're in.

Namaste

I snuck an extra yoga class in this morning. It feels a little like cheating on Janathon - technically, since my usual Monday evening thing was cancelled, I should have gone for a run because the whole point of doing Janathon was supposed to get me back into running. But you know, given the choice of a) something that hurts and is cold or b) doing something I adore that actually helps me...I don't think many people would choose A!

I had a wonderful practice. It was a super-busy class - 14 altogether - but that didn't matter at all. It was great to get some hamstring work in and we all managed a really cool pose which I think is a bridge but I've forgotten what it was called. At any rate, it took me right back to my time training with the European Historical Combat Society at Leeds Armories all those years ago. We worked on a pose which requires you to be on your hands and knees with your fingers pointed back at your knees, and we used to do that to strengthen our wrists for sword work.

Anyway, it was lovely and I really want to go twice a week. There's a little cafe-van thing on the industrial estate that I walk through to get to class and the lady that runs it always says good morning, and then chuckles at me as I float back. This morning I was so loopy afterwards that I wished her "namaste" and bowed as I walked past. Seemed appropriate at the time!

Pull-ups, pushups and planks to do tonight. Yuck. Swim tomorrow.

Inner Peace

I started yoga back in September - I got lucky, a class opened ten minutes walk from home, at a time that fitted in nicely with preschool hours. I'd been seeing a women's physiotherapist to try and sort out some of my hip problems and various other post-birth issues, and it came up that my hamstrings are - and always have been - dreadfully tight. Running and karate encourage that tightness because they're high-impact, and swimming requires you to flex your ankle pointing downwards. And so bearing in mind that other muscles around my hip joints are too loose, I thought I'd give these Radiant Heart classes a whirl.

They do seem to be helping a great deal - my hamstrings are looser, I've learned how to stretch them before karate to prevent injury, and the class definitely helps me unwind from any abuse I put myself through midweek. It also gets me ready for weekend karate plus swimming. Jane is an absolutely lovely teacher and I've been grateful to find a class which is all about the inner peace and getting right with your body. It damps down my overly-competitive nature and I've been working hard on mindfulness and meditation in everyday life, too.

When I arrived this morning I was delighted to run into a friend, but it did bring out that inner competitor and performer for a little while. My brain filled up with "Oh, hell, am I doing this right? Can I make this pose? Will I fall? Is anyone looking?". Jane, thankfully, put a lot of emphasis on following your breath this morning and my daily meditation practice, recently boosted by reading some Thicht Nhat Hanh, saved me from going loopy. The need to perform, conform and excel fell away and I had a wonderful practice. It was shoulder-focused today, for which my post-run aching legs were very grateful. And I didn't fall asleep during savasana (corpse pose, the final relaxation), which is probably a first!

Pull-ups, push-ups and planks to do before bed; gis are ironed and ready for morning and my swimming kit is already packed for Sunday. I love weekends!