Restorative yoga – Karen's New York Love Affair

Led Zeppelin carried me through

After my last entry, I was so enlivened by listening to Led Zeppelin while I wrote the blog post that I continued on to do a 40-minute practice while listening to more Led Zeppelin! So I didn’t need to use my Get Out of Jail Free card or car yoga excuse after all. I set up my mat facing the screen, as I would for a My Yoga Online practice, but instead I listened to and watched Led Zeppelin on YouTube while I did my practice. I found this incredible very early footage of Babe I’m Gonna Leave You, and watched it several times, as well as a 10-minute No Quarter.

Obviously, just as in life as a whole (I’m thinking of the impressionability of the soul here, which is impacted by everything that touches us), many things can affect our yoga practice. My interest in watching the glories of Led Zeppelin (to be honest, I preferred it to doing the yoga wholeheartedly) led me to spend a lot more time in poses where I could actually be looking at the screen, like wide-legged forward bend. Hey, whatever it takes to get in those 30 minutes!

Last night I was even more exhausted, because by the time I finished the yoga the night before it was 2:00 am. So when it came around to 10 pm, and time to do my practice, I chose another restorative yoga class from Melina Meza, Summer Yin Restorative Practice. This class was pretty tough. It is harder than it looks to do an easy pose for four or five minutes! Since this was just a 20-minute class, I followed it up with a 10-minute easy-peasy chair yoga class: Earth: For Grounding Body and Mind. The teacher of the chair yoga class is Mara Branscombe, a Vancouver yoga teacher who trained with Trinity Yoga, the same place where I received certification. This was a nice connection.

Anyway, the point is I am still on track with my aim of 30 minutes of yoga a day for 30 days. Thanks to my friends and family who have pledged 50 cents or a dollar or even two dollars a day for the 30-day Reach Out Challenge. The total pledges is now at $285 dollars! Almost at my goal of $300. If you haven’t done so and would like to sponsor me to raise money for Yoga Outreach, you can use the online donation link. Or phone me at 604.251.6337 or send an email to kyrempel [at] gmail [dot] com. Thanks!

Rigor bikramitis has set in

OMFG! I am not sure if I survived the Bikram yoga class after all! Yesterday morning when I wrote about the class, I had a small patch of sore muscle between my shoulder blades. As the day went on, the ache spread out from there into my entire back and legs. This morning it is difficult to lift my legs enough to put on my socks!

So the Bikram yoga class was definitely an overall body workout that reached into almost every muscle. I’m surprised my chin isn’t sore. My arms aren’t too bad, so unlike Ashtanga yoga with the sun salutation vinyasa flow, the Bikram class isn’t too hard on the arms.

Anyway, last night I was definitely ready for some restorative yoga, and I did Melina Meza’s Fall Yin Restorative Practice again. I thought it would be easy-peasy, and help ease out some of the stiffness in my body. It was not and did not. I could barely get into a simple supine side twist (shown above from the My Yoga Online video); I had to use two fat cushions under my bent knee to even get close to the pose! After that I did about 10 minutes of my regular yoga routine, and found that the muscles used in the poses I do regularly didn’t hurt. This is very interesting information, because it means the world of hurt is coming from muscles I am not using regularly. Who knew there were so many muscles!

Thanks to my friends and family who have pledged 50 cents or a dollar or even two dollars a day for the 30-day Reach Out Challenge. The total pledges is now at $285 dollars! Almost at my goal of $300. If you haven’t done so and would like to sponsor me to raise money for Yoga Outreach, you can use the online donation link. Or phone me at 604.251.6337 or send an email to kyrempel@gmail.com. Thanks!

Restore me and rest me

Last night I finished the work week with another restorative yoga class from My Yoga Online. I chose the Fall Yin Restorative Practice, by the same teacher as the Yin Yoga for Winter class (my Get Out of Jail Free card), Melina Meza.

I was so tired, this class seemed like the perfect choice. It was 22 minutes long, with a short series of poses, each held for 12 to 30 breaths:

supine butterfly
supine twist (two sides)
modified child’s pose with forearm stretch (two sides)
sphinx – this was much easier today, after having done it 5 days ago – a testament to how quickly the body adapts to new forms
virasana (kneeling pose)

Since the class was 8 minutes short of the full 30 minutes of the Reach Out Challenge, I followed it with 4 minutes of legs up the wall and 4 minutes of sivasana on the bolster. Then I did about another 10 minutes of Mysore practice (named after Mysore, India, a centre for yoga, the Mysore practice can be a free-flowing practice responding to the body’s spontaneous desire for movement).

According to the class description at My Yoga Online, “In the autumn, the Chinese Five Elements system promotes the lung and large intestine meridian lines to ensure that sufficient heat is drawn inward and downward, preventing imbalances that may result in the common cold, constipation, or insomnia. Yin yoga is a wonderful way to help restore your sense of balance after a long summer. In addition to calming the restless and anxious energy of fall, the longer held postures in this class will help prepare your mind, body, and spirit for meditation.”

Unfortunately, while the class did help me get to sleep, I woke up at 3:30 am feeling anxious and unable to get back to sleep! So I am not sure about the overall calming effects of the class. I did get up and meditate, so perhaps that part of the claim is true. However, it is possible that this new routine of practicing yoga daily, and doing poses that are not part of my regular practice, is opening up the energy channels (meridian lines) in my body. Perhaps I have so much energy running through the channels that I don’t need as much sleep. In any case, I love the Yin or Restorative yoga style, and look forward to trying the other classes with Melina Meza. She has several slightly longer vinyasa flow classes, as well as a Spring yin yoga class.

Thanks to my friends and family who have pledged 50 cents or a dollar a day for the 30-day Reach Out Challenge. If you haven’t done so and would like to sponsor me to raise money for Yoga Outreach, you can use the online donation link. Or phone me at 604.251.6337 or send an email to kyrempel@gmail.com. Thanks!