I'm so happy that I found this thread the other day!
1. Who are you? I'm Susan, a homeschooling, WAH momma to my two beautiful girls; my oldest is about to turn 13, and my youngest has just turned 8, so I don't have any tiny ones crawling on me during my practice. The cat hasn't jumped on me during downward dog yet, LOL, but she does usually rush in to be petted the moment she hears one of my videos going.
2. What are your goals for this month?
I generally try to do a yoga workout at least five days per week. I also have a brisk marching routine (about 22 minutes) that I do a few times a week, and I incorporate yoga into it by periodically speeding up to running in place for 30-45 seconds or so while raising my arms straight up and doing rapid breath of fire. On days when I don't do a yoga workout, I try to take at least a few minutes to meditate and do sun breath.
3. Tell us a bit about the place of yoga, and a yoga home practice, in your life. The literal meaning of yoga is yoke, or connection, and this is really what yoga is for me -- it's all about learning to experience my connectedness to all of life. In the most recent episodes of the TV show "The Biggest Loser," I really identified with Gina (who incidentally is 48 like me) when she explained that food had been her one and only constant companion, the only one she could count on to always be there for her.
I've realized that for me, the key to reaching a healthy weight and being a healthy person is in learning to just relax and experience the reality that I am already connected to everything I need. This connection is enabling me to learn to relate to other people, and to food, in a reverent and respectful way -- reverent and respectful toward both them and myself -- rather than in a lustful and needy way. Learning how to be still and feel how fulfilling it is to just breathe and listen and be a part of this dance of life and energy, this is where my healing is coming from.
It was the summer before last, when I was helping with my girls' summer camp at church (not really "camp" but more like Vacation Bible School without the Bible emphasis), that I first got inspired to begin learning yoga. A yogi came and led my daughters' classes through some poses, and I just realized that yoga was something I needed. I discovered a couple of yoga videos on YouTube, which my husband downloaded and installed on my computer for me, and built my practice around those. One is an introduction to Kundalini yoga, and one is a Hatha yoga easy groundwork video. The cool thing about yoga is that the same workout is never really the same workout, because you keep increasing your intensity and improving your technique over time.
I did beautifully for the first six months or so, then the weather started warming up again and I got really congested and tired...then the really hot weather came and we were without AC, as we will be again this summer, and I just kind of petered out. Then this past November, I went to a well woman's checkup and discovered that I weighed 294 lbs (at just under 5'10"), which is morbidly obese, and my blood pressure was in the pre-hypertensive category, and this gave me the motivation I needed to get back into the swing again. So I've been going pretty strong for the past few months, even though I'm now dealing with that springtime congestion again, only not as severe as last spring, and I'm determined to even push through when we get the 90-100 degree temperatures with no AC this summer. I'm actually hoping I'll sweat a lot of pounds off then.
4. Any sage advice to share? Just hang in there and start wherever you can. When I first started "getting back into the swing," my plans were to go really easy on myself and just do the Hatha easy groundwork for a long time...but pretty soon I felt ready to get back into the Kundalini, and more recently, I got the urge to do the brisk marching. SweetSilver, I also notice a change in my energy and motivation at a certain point in my cycle. It's important to just love ourselves through these less motivated times, and realize that a couple of days or so of slowing down aren't going to ruin everything.
Edited by mammal_mama - 3/30/13 at 7:15am
), I think that we've had enough of a good response to try this again in April, with a few adjustments to accommodate different people's focus. For example, I like to keep track of my yoga practice to encourage myself to make it a daily routine, and this helps give me one extra push to keep it going. Others might be more interested just in the conversation going on.
Follow Mothering