Monday, February 20, 2006

Oooooohhhhhhmmmmmm

Because I'm outside at least fifty percent of my day walking dogs, I am now getting about, oh, I'd say 300% more exercise everyday than I used to get. Being that I used to get none and now I am getting like three - four hours a day. Anyway, while I was used to being on my feet when I was working at Gap, my muscles were not used to being propelled in a forward motion at such a rapid pace. When I get home at night, my legs feel twitchy. I take a nice hot shower, and they relax a bit, but by the time I get into bed, they are all twitchy again and I can't fall asleep.

So, I decided to try yoga.

I tried yoga once before, back when I was actually in cardiovascular shape, and wanted to do something fun for strength training. So, I bought a yoga tape. However, the tape I purchased was more of a "build your flexibility slowly, until you can wrap your toes behind your ears" than a "build your muscles quickly, until you are lean and sleek and oh so hot" kinda tape, and after five minutes or so of practicing and then another fifteen minutes of checking out the rest of the tape to see if there was anything that looked remotely interesting, I gave up.

Tonight when I got home from work I dug that tape out from the back of our video drawer and popped it in. I set up my mat in front of the TV and started doing my yoga, this time seriously. It actually felt quite good, although I only got through about twenty minutes of the hour long tape. Not because it was too hard - I was really feeling it, more the stretch and tension release than the spiritual oneness kinda thing. While moving through one salutation, from Downward Dog to plank, my cat curled up under me on the mat and decided this was the perfect place for a nap. While doing a rolling-ball type thing, I rolled forward once, then back and bashed into my dog who was sitting at one end of the mat. Then to top it all off, as I bent forward and wrapped my wrists behind my ankles (okay, behind my knees, but still not so bad, I think), my glasses slid off my nose in that oh so cute way that makes me say "$1000 an eye? Lasik here I come". (I ripped my last contact two weeks ago, and my insurance doesn't kick in for new ones until February 22nd.)

So, was it a success? We'll see if I can fall alseep tonight without twitchy legs. But it did feel good while I was doing it, so once I get my contacts I'll give it another go, I think.

2 comments:

Alison at Wardrobe Oxygen said...

Yoga really helped me with the twitchy legs I got when I had LESS activity in my life when ai took a drone... oh I mean office job after retail. I wanted to be lean and trim from it, didn't really get that, but got deep sleep, lots of flexibility and less back pain. Hope it works for you!

Anonymous said...

I always wanted to try yoga but i'm VERY unflexible and would definitely look like a tool.

-Sara