Monday, September 16, 2013

4, 3, 2, 1...10,000

Alternate titles for this post:

Variety is the Spice of Life… a bit too cliché

Yoga Saved My Life… a bit too dramatic

So I opted for 4, 3, 2, 1…10,000

Which is exactly what I did last week- activity wise

4 yoga classes~ 3 hot yoga classes, one dynamic yoga class

3 runs~14 miles

2 boot camp classes~ 9 trillion squats and far too many burpees

And 1 session on my spin bike~ one hour and about 22 miles of insane pyramids

Plus at least 10,000 steps every day from walking.

*On days when I run I still try to get in 10,000 walking steps in addition to whatever steps logged in my workout.

                Monday- 10,297

                Tuesday- 25,618

                Wednesday- 21,289

                Thursday- 17, 402

                Friday- 12,838

                Saturday- 16,575

                Sunday- 11,208

In case you were wondering that’s 115,227 steps. I figure that about 25K of those steps came from running so about 90K, give or take, is from walking. Woo hoo! That’s still an average of over 10K walking steps a day!

Last week I really tried to focus on a few things; the basics I have been working on- tracking and getting more movement in during the day, limiting processed foods, and getting in a healthy mix of activities and man did I have a great week! It’s been two weeks since I started to incorporate yoga back into my routine and it really has it made a huge difference! Now I am going to explain why and you may think it sounds like a bunch of hooey, and that’s cool, but for me I think it is totally legit.

1)      Yoga provides balance. It grounds me. It’s calming focus on body, mind and spirit is the yin to my normal, hectic yang of a life. I have been so caught up in just making it through every day that I was starting to get easily overwhelmed. I have noticed a huge change just in the past 2 weeks; I am much more relaxed, much more centered and much more at peace with the craziness around me.

2)      Yoga gives me a focus. I am not sure about you but I certainly don’t set an intention for any other activity I do. Like I don’t set a focus on clarity or healing or peace during boot camp or a run. I just go out and run or finish the class and that is it. For me, those types of activities are all about the aerobic, and sometimes anaerobic, and strengthening benefits. But with yoga I can focus my energy during my practice on an intention which helps take me from my physical body to my spiritual body. Although I do sometimes focus on intentions that are related to my physical body, like an intention on healing, but you get my point.

3)      The more I nourish my soul the more I am nourishing my body. I am about to get all hippie on you here but this is honestly how I feel.  My body is happy. Between the yoga and the fact that I am really working on limiting processed foods I just feel so much more satisfied. I am not thinking about food all the time. I eat when I am hungry (still of course following my hunger cues) and I eat nutrient dense foods so I feel satisfied and that is great. That’s what should be happening. But the times in between the food- well yoga is really helping to bring back a calmness and clarity that shuts up my monkey mind, especially my often times food obsessed monkey mind. And that is so amazing.

Now don’t get me wrong, I still love all the other active areas of my life and I don’t plan on giving them up. They provide me with so much enjoyment on top of the health benefits it would be silly to let them go. But after seeing/feeling the changes that have occurred in my life just in the past two weeks well it probably goes without saying that yoga is here to stay J

And it’s about time! Yeah, I’m totally kicking myself for waiting so long after the move to find a new place to practice but that’s water under the bridge, right? Better late than never!

For this week-I have a pretty similar plan to last week’s.

5 yoga classes- 2 hot yoga classes, 1 dynamic yoga class, 1 kundalini class and 1 aerial yoga class- this time I am going to ask my instructor to take some pictures for me during aerial to share with you. It is such a cool way to do yoga!

3 runs

2 boot camp classes (hopefully, I may have a conflict tomorrow evening)

1 spin bike session (already completed this morning. Woot!)

And my daily goal of 10,000 walking steps

I am also testing out a new recipe this week: Simple Farro& Bean Stew. I actually cooked it yesterday and it is sitting in my fridge waiting to be eaten for dinner tonight. I am pretty excited- it smelled fantastic while it was cooking.

Are you trying anything new this week? Maybe a new food or recipe?

Do you like to practice yoga? Do you think it is important to find balance within the various activities you do?

No comments:

Post a Comment