Kathryn Budig Interview

I like what she has to say quite a bit.

Tree pose

The opening pose of ExerciseTV's PM Yoga video is the tree pose.

To start with I could not bring my foot all the way to the inside of my thigh, but lately I've really been getting the hang of it. And I'm getting pretty good at this balance.

Speaking of "hanging" though, there is only one small problem. When I'm bringing my foot up to the thigh, I find that I have to move my man-bits out of the way or they tend to get pinched. Not very fun.

A change from boxers to briefs when practicing yoga should take care of that though.

Forward Fold Fear

I have to admit to a little bit of dismay when -- perusing yoga literature, magazines and Web sites -- I come across a photograph of some yogi performing a forward fold in which it appears as though their body has a hinge built into the waist.

Here's an example of the kind of photo I'm talking about. It looks unnatural such a perfect forward fold, legs and back straight as arrows.

It goes without saying that my early experimentations with this yoga pose leave much to be desired.

It seems I can only get my head somewhere between half and three-quarters of the way to my feet. And that is only possible by rounding my back quite a bit.

No other pose has (yet) given me as much discouragement as those deceptively-simple looking forward folds.

Then I was blessed to see one of Tara Stiles' podcasts, in which she performs a forward fold. And lo and behold! While her head is properly in the vicinity of her feet, her back is also rounded. (PS- I also found this photo which makes me feel better too!)

And so I am reminded that these yogis really are human after all and not gifted with trick hinged waists.

Is yoga Hindu worship? Doesn't matter

Someone asked me recently, in response to all I've been writing about yoga: Isn't yoga really Hindu worship?

I replied that it wasn't. That, as I understood it, the practice of yoga outdated Hinduism by many centuries. That yoga was just an ancient way to exercise.

But I got to thinking about the subject and had a revelation. If it so happened that yoga was indeed a form of Hindu worship, it wouldn't matter.

Yoga philosophy teaches that the most important thing is love. And the Bible says in 1 John 4:7 that everyone who loves is a child of God and knows God.

Christian fundamentalists like to think that they have the direct line to the One True God. But anyone who knows love knows God; no matter what name they call him (or her) by, or even if they acknowledge the existence of god at all.

The reason that this is so is also found in 1 John 4, "God is love." You hear folks often say that God is "a god of love," but that isn't what the scripture says. He isn't a god of love, he is love. Makes for a very big difference.

Christian fundamentalists cannot accept that a Hindu may very well be worshipping the same god as they are because they do not serve the god that is love.

The Christian fundamentalist god is a jealous god (Exodus 20:5), but 1 Corinthians 13 tells us that love is not jealous. The Christian fundamentalist god condemns people to an eternity of the most horrible punishment imaginable because of a crime committed by a man 7,000 years ago, yet 1 Corinthians 13 tells us that love keeps no record of wrongs.

First Corinthians 13 gives a detailed description of what love is, and since God is love anything we think about God that doesn't match up should be done away with.

Yoga diary entry #2

Weeks 2 and 3 - Jan 19, 2010:

My yoga practice was pretty well sidetracked during the second week of January.

Average temperatures for this region this time of year range from highs of 40s to lows of 20s. That second week we saw highs not reaching double digits and lows in the negatives, and I'm not talking about wind chill either. Suffice to say it was cold.

The problem being that the camper we're living in was not designed to handle such cold temperatures and we were caught unprepared. And doing yoga on a floor hovering around 50 degrees (at most -- with our heaters cranked to max) was not something high on my to-do list.

But thankfully the temperatures have warmed back up (above normal now, we got to 60 today!) and I have returned gratefully to the mat.

I'm still working on the downward dog position. And I think I'm still making progress. In the last post I wrote that I found a more natural position taking up the full length of the mat. But lately I find myself bringing my feet closer to my hands and only using maybe three-quarters. The only reason I can say is that this feels more right to me the longer I practice.

One thing that really surprises me about down dog is how much that pose works the hamstrings. And one thing that yoga has definitely taught me about my body is that I have extremely tight hamstrings.

When I first started working on down dog it was a struggle to get my heels anywhere close to the mat. I'm getting better, and I can almost keep my feet flat now. But I really feel the burn in those particular muscles.

Another thing that working on this has really made me realize is that I need a teacher. I'm doing my best to learn these poses from the books, and trying to judge by feel when I'm doing it right. But I really can't see myself. My Beloved and I have tried the video thing some more, but what I need is real-time correction while I'm in the pose so that I can get a more direct sense of what I'm doing.

Luckily there is a local yoga teacher. Samantha Gillmore of Life Yoga in Nevada, Mo., offers classes all the time. And she's also offering a beginner's course at the local continuing education center starting the middle of February.

I've been putting off going to a class mainly because of budget reasons, but if I'm serious about this (and I am) I need to take a class. And that beginner's course is probably just what I'm looking for.

So in addition to working on down dog this week. I've also started the second pose in Yoga Journal's "Yoga for Beginners," Utthita Trikonasana, or Extended Triangle Pose.

I worked myself into that pose (or something similar anyway) for the first time today. And I am amazed at the feeling it creates in the chest. I am very excited about continuing to explore the new pose.

Again though I find myself frustrated by my sticky mat that is not sticky. The Extended Triangle Pose calls for a wide stance and I found my feet slipping while trying to hold the posture. Maybe a more sticky mat should be moved higher on my shopping list ... along with that class, oh and some blocks. I made-do tonight with a square pillow we have, but it wasn't quite the same thing as a solid block.

Downward facing dog

As part of my resolution to really start exploring the individual yoga poses, I also decided that I would start keeping a diary of my thoughts and experiences regarding my workouts. So here's my first entry.

Week 1 - Jan. 1, 2010:

I started work yesterday really exploring the pose downward facing dog. It is the first listed in the Yoga for Beginners Mastering the Basics, and it seems like you can hardly find a yoga sequence that does not mention this pose in some fashion or another. I figured it was as good a place as any to start.

The AM Yoga video from ExerciseTV utilizes down dog quite a bit, so I figured I could do a little work on this one and move on to the other poses rather quickly. I was wrong.

As I mentioned in an earlier posting, the ExerciseTV videos are great but they do move pretty quickly. So when I sat down to learn down dog "for real" I found that I didn't have quite the grip on it I thought.

Firstly, I found that the back of my calves are extremely tight. I discovered this when I realized that in the past I had been performing down dog on my toes, when according to the magazine the correct position for the feet is flat on the mat. The second indication that I was doing something wrong was that it hurt quite a bit between my shoulder blades.

I was having a very hard time trying to figure out what I was doing wrong, so I asked my Beloved to help me, she'd watch and compare with the photos in the magazine. That didn't work as well as I'd hoped so she pulled out our little digital camera and took some video of me in the pose so I could see what I looked like for myself. She thought the process was quite funny.

The first thing I noticed on the video was that for some reason I was only using about half my mat. The photo in the magazine depicts a guy with the tips of his fingers near one edge of the mat and the heels of his feet at the other. And here I was scrunched up in the middle of mine. My first thought was "no way I can stretch out that far, he must be taller or have a shorter mat."

Wrong again. I tried again this time making sure I was using the whole mat. And wouldn't you know it? I could do it. And it felt much better this way. Imagine that. And here's where I discovered another problem, my $9 Wal-Mart mat is not nearly as sticky as I thought. Trying to hold downward dog became pretty difficult because my hands kept slipping forward. I suppose I will have to invest in a better mat sooner than I had thought.

Getting myself spread out was a big improvement, but I was still experiencing some pretty intense pain between my shoulders. So I took a short break, read through the article again then worked a little more in the puppy dog variation described by the author. In the puppy dog I paid very close attention to the alignment of my hands, arms and shoulders; I just knew that the problem lay in that area somewhere.

Then when I got back down to try the full downward facing dog, I noticed something about my hands. The text of the article says to make sure that the crease lines in your wrists form a straight line. I had figured that if my fingers were pointing straight ahead, those lines would be straight too. I was -- again -- wrong. To make the creases of my wrists form a straight line, I had to angle my fingers outwards just a tiny bit. And so far that seems to have done the trick.

All told I practiced down dog for about 40 minutes. By the time I had finished I felt I had made really good progress with this pose. And after finishing I was very surprised to find that my entire body felt very good. I think I had been working under the assumption that to get the "yoga-glow" feeling you had to do a complete set with several different poses. I was not expecting to find that working on just one pose left me feeling so good.

I am very encouraged by last night's effort and cannot wait to continue working on these exercises.

Yoga 2

For some time I have been looking for a simple form of exercise that I could practice on my own that did not require a large investment in equipment.

I've been learning Tai Chi on-again-off-again for the last two or three years. Tai Chi though is rather complex, the basic form has 24 different moves that you must learn to complete the sequence. And the entire set requires quite a bit of space to move.

Around about this past October I finally got around to looking at yoga (I'll explain a little more about why it took me so long later). I got on the iTunes Store looking for instructional videos and quickly found ExerciseTV's "Anytime Yoga" series of which they were giving the "PM Yoga" video away for free.

Since Halloween I have done the 10-minute PM set nearly every night before going to bed. The effect on my rest at night were noticeable immediately. However what surprised me most was that the near constant back and neck pain along with numbness and tingling in my hands and fingers that I had been experiencing since late summer and which was beginning to interfere at work was gone by Thanksgiving, a mere four weeks later.

Yoga is exactly what I've been looking for. There isn't a lot to learn in order to start. There isn't a lot of equipment to purchase, I bought a $9 mat from Wal-Mart because I found myself slipping on the carpet when trying to hold some of the poses. And it doesn't require a lot of space. There is just enough space in the living room of our camper for me to do the exercises, though I am already dreaming of the time we finish our house and can have more room to stretch out in.

The past three months I have been very happy keeping to the videos, but now I feel the need to really learn the poses on my own. The videos are good but they go rather quickly, and I'm looking to slow down and really plumb the depths of these exercises.

So for the coming new year I will be making a concerted effort to learn the individual poses by themselves and in depth. I will utilize the "Yoga for Beginners" special issue put out by Yoga Journal along with the many resources online as well as hopefully finding a local teacher to spend some time with.

Two hungers

I've been steadily losing weight, and trying to watch my health for some time now.

One thing that has become evident to me especially more recently, is that there are two hungers at war within my body.

There's the body hunger which tells me when I need food for nourishment. And there is the mind hunger which tells me that I want food, often for emotional satisfaction.

And I've learned that most often when I've said "I'm hungry" I'm referring to the mental/emotional hunger.

While paying attention to the signals I'm receiving, I've noticed that I'll often crave food and develop the symptoms of low blood sugar even when my body is telling me that it is full and satisfied.

Compulsion

Normally, when I try an exercise routine (yes, I am writing more about yoga), I'll keep at it a while then I'll lose interest or something will interfere and I'll quit. And it is harder than heck to get started again.

But with yoga it seems to be the other way around. Last night I came home exhausted, and I told myself I did not want to do my little 10 minute set before bed.

But I did anyway. I couldn't help myself. One half of it was knowing how good the exercises make me feel. Another half of it was knowing how crappy I feel in the morning the few times I haven't done them. And yet another half of it was knowing how much better I'd sleep having done them.

I feel that I am compelled to practice. My body has found something that it likes, that it needs. And it makes it known when I think about forgoing a session.

Yoga poses

Yes, I'm really getting into the whole yoga thing.

Anyway, I came across a pose called the supported shoulder stand. Although the first picture I found (in a book) shows the legs angling about 45-degrees over the head.

And I remembered that when I was a kid I would often sit in that pose because it felt good.

So I must be some natural-born yogi! Just kidding.

It makes sense that a person would be able to find some of these poses on their own though, they just feel good!

Yoga update

This coming Sunday will mark four weeks since I started practicing short yoga routines in the mornings and evenings.

And I am absolutely in love with the practice.

The changes that the short workouts have produced in such little time amaze me.

I feel much better all through the day. I am not constantly tired-feeling like I was before.

And the major change is that my back no longer hurts, and the numbness/tingling I was experiencing in my hands and fingers has completely gone away too.

If you've never tried yoga, you really ought to give it a shot.

Flexibility

One thing I find very difficult about the yoga is that I am no where near as flexible as I once was.

I remember during health class in high school being able to out stretch everyone in class.

Now-a-days, not so much.

Yoga

I have been off and on trying to learn Tai Chi over the past couple years. But time and space restrictions usually got in the way.

One thing I did make a semi-regular practice of though was the stretching exercises at the beginning of my Tai Chi DVD. I could notice a pretty good difference in my day after doing the stretches in the morning.

So recently I've been reading about yoga, and I found a really great series of TV episodes on iTunes. Each episode is a 10 minute yoga sequence. There's one for AM one for PM, one focussing on abs and a couple other general ones.

I did the PM sequence Friday night and it was amazing. I did it again Saturday and Sunday, and I am completely hooked.

Sunday night I came home feeling really really crappy. My nephew greeted me on our latest visit by slugging me in the face and wrenching my neck out. Then Saturday I started feeling as though I was coming down with the crud. And Sunday I had a full eight hour shift to work at WalMart and I just felt like junk.

Then I came home and did a very simple 10 minute exercise and I felt relaxed and rejuvenated. It really is incredible.

And one of the greatest things about it is that there is no equipment necessary. And it does not take a lot of space. The living room of our camper has just enough space for me to perform the poses.

I love it.

Namaste!

PS- Here are the videos I purchased: Anytime Yoga on iTunes from ExerciseTV.