PM Yoga

A friend gifted me a copy of AM/PM Yoga for Beginners, as an Amazon.com mixup left him with two copies.
It took me a while to get it into the DVD player, but last night I tried it.
It's been almost... well... 9 years since I did yoga with any regularity.
Wow! Almost a decade - that's unconscionable!
I've dropped in to the Atma Center now and then for their free yoga week, and I have a book on poses I occasionally crack open and relearn sun salutations - but regular practice rarely sticks.

I did it with such regularity when I lived in Arizona, and again when I moved back to Ohio that I've somehow been in denial that I no longer practice it.
Isn't that funny? That something you did with regularity in a formative period can implant itself into your mind in a way that makes you think... "I do this thing," even if you haven't regularly done it for quite some time.

I'm proud to say that despite a mini-sabbatical, I have gone back to Modern Dance Monday at Studio 11 and it has been reminding me how sedentary my life has become. So last night, recovering from a muddy hike on Sunday and following a solid hour of dance, I gave the DVD a chance.

It's broken into a number of chapters, and I tried the 25 minute "Good Night's Sleep" since that's what I need more than anything these days. It was mostly breathing exersizes and restful poses, and calmed me down quite a bit, but I have enough chatter in my head to cut right through true restfulness.

Tonight I did the 40 minute "Energizing Evening" and I can see myself doing this regularly. It's like a full yoga class without worrying if your top is falling off when you do downward dog. Barbara Benagh has a wonderful voice, and assumes you know most poses, so there's little wasted time teaching you how to get from pose to pose (much appreciated.) I have that wonderful rested/focused feeling I always got after class, the one that immediately went away when I got in the car and drove home... except I have it in my jammies, 20 steps from bed.

Overall, I enjoy it, and I think it'll keep me from my bad habit of getting into some 10pm show I don't really want to watch then watch anyway because 10pm always seems so early to sleep. It may actually enable me to replace a bad habit with a good one.

... and increase flexibility and core muscles to boot!

More to come on the AM when I become the person who can wake up with enough time to do yoga before work. Although, if I keep going to bed at a decent hour, that might actually come to pass.

Wouldn't it be great if yoga begot yoga?