A big deal for me...

Confession: I am not very self-motivated, especially when it comes to excercise. This is why I enjoy the class experience so much. If left to my own devices, as soon as it starts getting too hard, or I get too winded, it's too easy to just STOP. (I mean, really, would I ever just go to the gym and do weights for an hour? No, but I'll do the Total Body class and enjoy it... which is an hour of doing weights!)

However, if I'm in a class full of people and there are people 35 years older (or more!) than me hanging in there and even kicking my tail a little bit, my competitiveness kicks in and I keep going. I may be looking at the clock and counting down the minutes until the torture is over, but I always hang in there until the bitter end.

As I've mentioned on here a hundred and eleventy billion times, I love Yoga (and Pilates, but especially Yoga). It's been 3 weeks today since I've had a Yoga class and I miss it.

This book arrived the other day,

and I've just found it so helpful and enlightening. It's mostly a deeper look at the root causes of anxiety and how to deal with it. Only a little bit of the book focuses on beneficial poses, but I found it to be an amazing coincidence (or not) that a lot of poses that were already my favorite are ones that are considered calming and helpful for anxiety. Reading so much yesterday got me really missing my Yoga class, and wanting to do Yoga RIGHT THAT MINUTE.

When I got home, I searched our TV for any exercise channel/programs I could find. I found two Yoga and one Pilates program, but they air early in the mornings. I set my DVR to record them and figured I'd have to wait to tonight to do them. But as the minutes ticked by, I just felt more edgy and restless. I needed Yoga right that second. Without the slightest clue how I was going to flow from one pose to the next, or even what poses I could tackle on my own without someone instructing me, I rolled my mat out onto the living room floor and  just did it. The more I did, the more I remembered and I just kept doing it, making sure to do all my favorites and ending with seeing how long I could stay in certain plank positions to challenge myself. When I rolled my mat back up and looked at the clock, 30 minutes had passed! I was more than a little proud of myself, but more importantly, my stress and anxiety had melted away. I still had a hard time falling asleep, but that was just regular old insomnia and not from being anxious. I felt quite calm and my mind was quiet. It was a wonderful accomplishment to do it on my own, but I really look forward to doing it tonight with instruction thanks to the programs I recorded... And I look even more forward to my favorite yogi returning from vacation in August!