Yoga at home...

Heather introduced me to yoga. She diligently read about, learnt about and began practicing yoga a few years ago deep in the sparsely populated African savanna near the small village of Mogwase. Where we one lived. She is, and will always be, the most amazing person I know...I had an opportunity to show her one of the strange and wonderful poses I learnt recently in yoga class...Here she is looking seriously dislocated as she should attempting this cool pose.

Thursday is yoga day...

This is my third class and I am loving it...Never thought I would like yoga as much but I do. I find it very difficult and am disgusted by the state of my body...I need serious unwinding therapy...there are parts of my body that I am sure I have not stretched since I was a baby and in Yoga class I have rediscovered what they are...I feel sorry for the poor Chinese girl next to me today since I was pouring with sweat after 5 mins. I'm afraid that she might have gotten sprinkled from time to time (I'm so embarrassed...) BUT I am so very serious about this and determined to become proficient with Yoga. I am learning Hatha Yoga...which apparently is the basis for all Yoga and supposed to be easy and unforced...now I know why my teacher looks at me strangely when I'm grunting and straining to achieve a pose....other than the spectator value of a grunting and straining foreigner of course....

Typically we go from the mountain pose to the chair pose down to the forward bending pose or something like that...we end up with our palms flat in a pose similar to the forward bending pose....from their we descend into a squat and kick out into a kind of push up pose and then the upward facing dog and then the downward facing dog...We have done some amazingly strange poses... Oh the there are a bunch of warrior poses as well...Still trying to get a hang of things heehee.

Learnt this one today....not as easy as it looks...but fun, fun, fun....

Yoga Thursday

I started yoga today...I was scared stiff going since I didn't know what to expect. It was out of this world. I can't explain how wonderful it was, I feel like a million bucks. There's this amazing endorphin buzz that puts you at peace with yourself and the world. Plus I had a great workout. Stepped into class with a friend who said she would go with me the first time to introduce me to the class. It's in Chinese. Everyone was busy in a pose so I quickly stepped onto a mat and joined in. It was fantastic! I love Yoga! In one particular pose, I was straining to get into it, it was quite funny and I looked up to see a few other people struggling as well. There was an exchange of embarrassed smiles with the teacher and us that was quite humorous...but that was how humble it was there...down to earth and practically spiritual. Wonderful.