Yoga is the worst! But also the best. But also the worst.

Tonight I went to my second yoga class this week. This was after having taken seven months off of yoga, training for a marathon, getting injured and completely out of shape, going to physical therapy, and then (currently) making the arduous uphill climb back to some semblance of fitness. So you can imagine, it was an experience, and I'm not ashamed to admit that at many points I hated it.

Because no, I this is not relaxing. I do not feel my breath. I am not into the flow. And I have no idea where my inner peace is, but I seriously doubt I'm going to find it in a room full of Lululemon-clad women with the city sounds of sirens and street noise serenading us from the sidewalk.

But I go to yoga anyways. Because my back needs twisting, my hips need opening, and oh my goodness could my hamstrings and calves be any tighter??? I go because it's good for me. Forcing me to stretch for an extended period of time. Improving my core strength and stabilizing muscles and all those things that will make me better at running and (most importantly) will decrease my chances of getting injured.

But do I like it? At all? Today in class, while we were supposed to be clearing our minds, I thought about this...

So I've always had mixed feelings. I was not a fan in high school and college, but then I came to like Bikram when I first moved to DC. From Bikram I moved on to try other forms of yoga, and oftentimes enjoyed them too.

Last fall when my back was a mess, I went to yoga multiple times per week because it was pretty much the only exercise I could do: vinyasa flow, power yoga, bootcamp yoga -- you name it I was in. And I liked it. I liked the noticeable improvement from week to week. I liked how strong it made me feel, like my body could and would do whatever I wanted (within reason, let's not get crazy). I liked how I felt so in control of my movements. Want me to hold that pose forever? Sure. Oh so now my leg goes here? Yeah no prob. Another chaturanga (yoga push-up)? On it.

Of course I will never be a yogi-master, nor do I want to be. There are some ways my body just does not bend, and poses I doubt I will ever be able to do -- i.e., I have no interest in headstands or arm balances, and I don't care to master side-crow or dragonfly.

But I do want to get to the point that feels reasonably not terrible.

So are you ready for the secret? People talk about yoga like it's oh so great immediately and always, but like any sport or athletic endeavor, it takes time to get in shape. To get used to the movements. To know what's up in both your head and in your muscles. And just like running, once you get in shape, that is when it starts to feel really good.

In conclusion, despite the pure torture stretching and holding and balancing and holding will be for a bit, I'm on the yoga train for the summer. Namaste.

Weekend Report: International Crisis, My Life as a Snow Leopard, and One-Legged Vinyasas

I swear that the title will make sense by the end of this post....What a weekend! I am exhausted.

Roommate Rachel is Mr. Mondavi (of the wine).
I am a snow leopard, obviously.

Friday evening and all day Saturday I participated in a crisis simulation "game"...because that is totally normal right? Aah grad school. How it works is that participants are organized into (mostly) country teams, and given background reading on the international context. Then everyone is given the scenario of a realistic international crisis in the year 2017, and has to work together within teams to come up with a strategy and carry it out. The point is for  us to play roles as decision-makers and to experience the problems, dilemmas, and processes of managing a crisis or resolving a conflict.  (More info here if you care.)

I was given the role of Chechen terrorist (my name tag: “Miss Mollie, Terrorist Organization”), which was exciting and interesting, but also deeply disturbing when you think about it too hard. Turns out that in the context of a crisis game, I am pretty good at devising seriously destructive scenarios…eek? We issued press releases, video press releases (hilarious), and carried out actions over the course of 3 2-hour "moves." I was allegedly assassinated at one point, but don't worry, I came back to life. It was definitely an experience.

With just a couple hours recovery, I traded my terrorist garb (!?!? I can’t believe I just wrote that) for leopard print and headed out to celebrate Halloween! I went as a snow leopard because a) I already owned the pants; and b) snow leopards are the most bad-ass animal out there.

My school’s dorm (I do not live there) throws a huge Halloween party every year and it was pretty epic! I can’t remember the last time I actually did Halloween, but I do enjoy a good excuse to dress up.

Sunday was far more normal, and involved neither an international crisis nor a costume – just some good old fashioned doing homework at my dining room table, interrupted by mid-afternoon power yoga and rock climbing. So many one-legged vinyasas! There is a reasonably good chance I will be unable to lift my arms tomorrow.

You should definitely try these -- here's how:

Just keep going through that, one side at a time, until everything burns so much that you have to stop. (If the pictures aren't enough, here's a more detailed description.) Told ya it was fun! 

Yoga and Mountain Biking in Boston

Friends, it's been about 6 weeks and I'm still not running. I know. Mistakes were made, lessons were learned, yada yada yada, BLERG. Don't even get me started. But I promise to keep this post on the positive side and talk about all the fun things I've been doing instead!

The Fells!

Mountain Biking

I've been biking a lot this past month. I live next to a bike path, I ride to and from school (and everywhere else I need to go), and exercise! I need it! The out-and-back to Bedford on the Minuteman Trail is getting old, but it's a solid 22 miles with minimum traffic that requires very little thought on my part. However, this weekend I changed things up a bit...

After a Saturday morning of homework I was ready for a break, so I hopped on my bike and peddled away, with no exercise objective in mind other than movement. I meandered around Medford and found my way to The Fells, a mid-suburb wilderiness(ish) area I had heard of but, until Saturday, never seen.

Route details on MapMyRun.

Trails! Oh fun! My rambling ride quickly turned into a mountain biking (mis)advenure. In case you're wondering, no, I do not actually "know" how to mountain bike...but I bike a lot and I'm experienced at throwing myself down dangerous hills (refer back to my ski racing days), so I winged it reasonably well. It was fun! I need more adrenaline in my homework-heavy life...

I say mis-adventure because after about a half-hour it sunk in that mountain biking alone on a hybrid bike is probably not a thing an inexperienced person should do. So I continued my meander through Medford. But I will be going back to The Fells!

Yoga

I have been yoga-ing HARD. I no longer do Bikram, but I joined a rock gym here in Somerville, and they offer yoga classes every day! I do vinyasa, power yoga, yoga for climbers -- basically whatever class I can work into my schedule.

I'm not a "yoga person" (you know what I mean), and I have never been super-good at it. But I am generally strong, and usually on the stronger side of people in your average yoga class. Well, not anymore! Let me tell you, yoga at a rock gym, with every class full of core-strong upper-body fit rock climbers, is a different game entirely! Woah dang people are strong!

Going to 2-4 classes a week does really make a difference. I can now do a lot of push-ups -- the kind with your elbows tucked in -- and about three seconds of crow. I can do one-armed vinyasas, and I don't even want to know how long of plank. I can hang out in chair pose for a while, and I can actually do a class-full of downward dog and still be able to lift my arms the next day.

This is not me. Obviously. I aspire to someday
look this good while doing yoga.

Though I feel incredibly unfit due to not running, I don't think I've ever been so all-body strong. Hooray for my core? This will probably be good whenever I actually start running again. And while I have no aspirations of becoming a yoga-master (let's be real, in an ideal world I'd be running every day and going to just one or two classes a week), for now I am learning to enjoy it!

Weekend Report: Cherry Blossoms, Heated Yoga, and the Drum Circle

People either get this or they don’t, but sometimes I just love puttering by myself. SpeedyKate was away for the weekend, so I spent Friday night and Saturday all alone just doing my Mollie thing. And it was glorious.

Saturday morning, I slept ridiculously late (for me that means until 10:30), then went for a long run around the Tidal Basin and Hains Point. The cherry blossom tourists were out in full force, packing the Mall’s paths and sidewalks and pushing me off to run in the street. I don’t really mind though – I think of tourists as the price we pay to live in a nice place that people want to visit!

There were a few good blossoming trees down at the end of Hains Point and I was just so happy to be running in a tank top in the sunshine.

And while the families and photographers and hanami enthusiasts were probably bummed that the 3,750 sakura trees weren’t quite blossoming yet, I can look forward to beautiful cherry blossom runs all this week and maybe next.

Map details here. 

Saturday night I went to a fun but sad goodbye/good luck/congratulations party for my friend Carrie, who is moving with her fiancé to Tennessee. The saddest thing about living in DC is that everybody leaves…sigh. But if you’re looking for an awesome Tri coach, and/or a chiropractor, in Knoxville, look up Carrie and John!

Sunday was another slow day for me – lots of outside time, sitting in the sun and biking and getting a few things done.

Sunday afternoon I went to a heated vinyasa yoga class at Yoga District on H Street. You may recall that I used to do Bikram yoga (the REALLY hot yoga) pretty regularly, so the heat does not scare me, but the yoga poses and flow of it all can be tricky! The teacher started with some chatter about how 108 is a holy number etc. etc. etc…conclusion? Today we’re going to do 108 push-ups! Oh. My. Goodness. Seriously guys, I am so sore all over and my run this morning was rough.

After yoga I hopped on my bike and headed to the Drum Circle. YAY DRUM CIRCLE! It happens every Sunday from 3-9pm at Meridian Hill/Malcom X Park, and has been happening there for over 40 years. When I lived nearby in Dupont, I used to go pretty regularly, but since I moved to Eastern Market last May I haven’t gone once. A travesty!

A not very good picture from yesterday.

The Drum Circle is the most eclectic group of people in DC – there are the drummers themselves (and cowbell and tambourine and clarinet and recorder and whatever other instrument players want to play), and then the dancers in the middle of the drummers, then the watchers and swayers and children and other dancers around the outside of the circle. And then around the park you have picnickers, slack liners, hula hoopers, krav maga-ers, acro-yogis, jugglers, and people doing really any other odd outside activity you can think of. Best people watching ever and one of my all-time favorite things about DC.

It’s still early in the season, so not quite green yet, but these pictures from my first Drum Circle blog post a couple years ago capture it well.

And that, my friends, is that. Yay springtime weekending!

Best of the Week #75

So this came as an interestingly pleasant surprise – last night I discovered that the way to get better at yoga is to not do yoga for four months. Seriously, it was one of my best classes ever. In Eagle Pose I twisted no-problem. In Standing Head to Knee, I straightened my non-standing leg! My balance was awesome in Standing Bow, and I had the best Triangle Pose ever. Moral of the story? Tri-annual Bikram Yoga might just be the way to go…

In other workout news, for once I had a week completely devoid of post-work plans, which means I exercised a lot. I ran every morning (just a little bit), and then biked, rock climbed, and went to yoga. It was excellent!

My most popular post this week was “Hip Flexor and Piriformis Stretching and Strengthening.” Perhaps the fact that I’ve been doing these exercises contributed to my yoga improvements? Anywho, probably worth the read for any runners out there.

And now for some fun Friday links!

Per usual, I’m late to the trendy pop-culture party…but what the WHAT? I have no words, only emotions.
Watch the music video.

But if you want some words, here’s an accompanying article: “Gangnam Style, Dissected: The Subversive Message Within South Korea's Music Video Sensation.”

• Park Jaesang is an unlikely poster boy for South Korea's youth-obsessed, highly lucrative, and famously vacuous pop music. Park, who performs as Psy (short for psycho), is a relatively ancient 34, has been busted for marijuana and for avoiding the country's mandatory military service, and is not particularly good-looking.

This is by far the weirdest thing you will read this month: “From Otherkin to Transethnicity: Your Field Guide to the Weird World of Tumblr Identity Politics.”

• What does this mean? An otherkin is a being born into the wrong body. Not just with the wrong parts, but as the wrong species: people who identify as otherkin believe that they are a wolves, or elves, or really any kind of being, born into a human body.
• Being otherkin, to this group, isn't just about resisting technology or being in touch with nature (though these, and other fantasy and new age elements, still form a large part of otherkin culture) — it's about being marginalized, ignored, laughed at, and oppressed. It's like being transgender. And as this otherkin group has transformed its language and its focus, so too has its scope widened. Otherkin identities can encompass fictional characters. Or nonliving, inanimate objects. Or even multiple identities — some fictional, some animal, all of them occupying a single body. Out of this widening comes new words: cisspecies. Transethnicity. Transablism. Transfat.

“The Greatest Books of All Time, As Voted by 125 Famous Authors.”

• “Reading is the nourishment that lets you do interesting work,” Jennifer Egan once said. This intersection of reading and writing is both a necessary bi-directional life skill for us mere mortals and a secret of iconic writers’ success, as bespoken by their personal libraries. The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books asks 125 of modernity’s greatest British and American writers — including Norman Mailer, Ann Patchett, Jonathan Franzen, Claire Messud, and Joyce Carol Oates — “to provide a list, ranked, in order, of what [they] consider the ten greatest works of fiction of all time– novels, story collections, plays, or poems.”

I really really want my soon-to-be-born nephew to come out looking like this:

OK, full disclosure: I JUST learned that “compliment” and “complement” are two different words. For those of you who already knew that, go ahead and feel superior. For those of you (like me) who are SHOCKED right now, you’re welcome.

• Compliment -- A polite expression of praise or admiration.
• Complement -- A thing that completes or brings to perfection.

The city and country where I studied abroad (Niamey, Niger) is under water. "11 neighborhoods in Niamey have flooded." And watch a video of the destruction here.

Sign. So true: “Top ten things that would-be foreign policy wonks should study”

• History, Statistics, Foreign Language, Economics, International Law, Geography, Culture, Communication, Science. 

I follow the blog "1000 Awesome Things," and here’s a TED talk with the creator! “The 3 A’s of awesome.”

Best read of the week: This could almost be written by me (if I were funnier): “The Long Run: Notes on a Taper.”

• The six months since I signed up for the race had been a case study in chaos. I landed a new job. I hurdled time zones in a series of unplanned trips. And I consistently fell prey to an entrenched lack of self-discipline, most problematically around heeding the note I taped above my alarm clock, which in reference to my goal marathon time sternly read, “2:59, get up now!”
• With steadfast determination, I focused on the taper’s holy trinity: eat more, run a lot less, and sleep. I was bringing my A-game to all three.
• I headed back and did what I do in any high-stress, low-preparation situation: I made a list.

I kind of want these hard-boiled egg shapes. Actually, scratch that -- I really want these and just added them to my Amazon cart.

My own WTF Friday: "UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon met face-to-face with Sudanese president and international war criminal Omar Al Bashir."

• It is not clear whether the meeting marks “the UN’s moral rehabilitation of the Khartoum regime“. But if nothing else, the meeting between Ban Ki-Moon and Omar al-Bashir illustrates just how little interest there remains within the international community to arrest or truly isolate Bashir. Darfur seems to be on the international community’s back-burner. And that’s a significant victory for one person in particular: Omar al-Bashir himself.

Ooohh election season. In case you care: “What you should be reading for election news.”

• If I had to pick other news sources this cycle, I might say the New Yorker’s Political Scene podcast, and of course the Daily Show. Plus my Twitter feed.

New pet anyone? (source)

• White tigers are not Siberian tigers, but instead are an extremely rare form of Indian tiger.
• The white tiger has a recessive gene mutation that causes it to be born semi-albino. The defect happens to one in ten thousand tiger births. As the defect is only a semi-albino gene, the eyes retain some blue color rather than turning completely red. Aside from the eyes, the nose, mouth, eyelids and pads are all a reddish pink.

Video: "How to Caramelize Onions in 15 Minutes."

• This week, I decided to challenge myself to see how fast I could caramelize onions without the "cheaty" additions of sugar and baking soda, relying only on heat and a bit of water to prevent burning. I managed to do it in 15 minutes and 22 seconds. Not bad, considering it can take over an hour to do the traditional way.

For all the Parks and Recreation fans out there, this exists: "Ron F***ing Swanson Barbecue Sauce (on a Turf ‘n’ Turf)"

• The new Parks and Rec Ron Swanson barbecue sauce was intriguing. But the idea that it's meant to be served on a 24-ounce porterhouse steak plus a 16-ounce T-bone steak, with whiskey and a cigar, was absolutely compelling.

Ok, this very long list of things says that clearly I spent WAY too much time on the interwebs this week...wasting my time so you don't have to waste yours...have a great weekend!

Weekend Report: Yoga at the Swedish Embassy and a Turkish Festival

I find myself on many DC email lists. My overcrowded inbox can be annoying, but it's totally worth it when I get invited to things like yoga on the rood of the Swedish Embassy in Georgetown! I've been up there once before, and the opportunity to do yoga with such a great view was too good to pass up. 

Alas, the weather conspired against me and a cold drizzle forced the yoga inside (the above picture is from the last time I was there). Oh well, it was still pretty cool to do my -assanas surrounded by famous Swedish art. I'm normally a Bikram girl, and this weekend confirmed it...I don't love Bikram yoga, but I love regular yoga even less. Downward dog is the bane of my existence (and, more specifically,  the torment of my tight hamstrings).

After the class, LOTR-Emily and I meandered about the building to check out what Sweden had to offer - some pretty cool textiles! And thanks to LOTR-Emily, I know two words in Swedish: tak (thank you), and fika (coffee break). Any culture that has a word for 'coffee break' is one I want to be associated with!

Saturday afternoon was still cold and drizzly - aka perfect movie-watching weather! We watched The Two Towers extended version chez LOTR-Emily (fitting, no?), in honor of LOTR season. The movie accompanied by amazing raspberry cupcakes (I'll post about them tomorrow), and some fantastic apricot almond oatmeal bread made by LLC.

Sunday morning my house hosted a brunch party. I manned the stove, flipping piping hot pumpkin pancakes like the October-loving breakfast afficianado that I am. My roommates contributed broccoli quiche, blueberry muffins, and super-dark coffee to round out the meal. It was delicious.


Then I met up with SpeedyKate to check out a Turkish Festival in downtown DC. We watched a few rounds of beautifully-costumed dancers, the first group were Turkish, and the second were Azerbaijani (if I remember correctly). 

FunFact: Do you know the difference between Turkish and Turkic? Turkish means you're actually from Turkey or speak Turkish, and Turkic is a  family of languages and related cultures spread throughout Central and West Asia. 

We finished off the festival with some delicious baklava - Middle Eastern/Mediterranean food is so good! 

Then Sunday evening I went for a very chilly but pleasant run - look at me go! Making my comeback! :)

Weekend Report: The Mall with My Refugees

Believe it or not, eating, running, and reading is not ALL I do! Since all of those activities are a wee bit on the selfish side, I do some volunteering to balance it out. 

SORRY - I HAD TO REMOVE THE PICTURES! BUT THEY WERE REALLY CUTE!

I work with a family of refugees from the Congo – they moved to MD this spring after spending 5 years in a refugee camp in Tanzania. When they arrived they didn’t speak any English (their first language is Swahili, and one of the uncles speaks a little bit of French). Co-volunteer Dorothee and I make our way to their home in Riverdale at least once a week to teach them English and help them with all things America (which is tricky!).

This weekend we wanted to give them a break from the tediousness of homework and tutoring and government paperwork and instead do something fun. So we did what all DC-newbies do – DC Monuments and Memorials! They loved it! We embraced the gorgeous fall weather and walked around the WWII Memorial, picnicked on the lawn of the Lincoln Memorial, saw the Korean War Memorial, and then ended up at FDR.

Along the way we learned words – grass (unyasi), trees (mti), path (njia), fountain, waterfall (maanguko), kite (tiara), mud (matope) etc. Someday I will actually learn Swahili...

I explained (as well as I could in very simple English) the wars and events that inspired these memorials – I’m pretty sure they got it…but you never really know. 

As we walked through the fountains and waterfalls of the FDR memorial, we encountered a tour-bus-full of WWII vets. I explained that the old men in “Vets” baseball caps used to be soldiers who won the war. I also took a stab at explaining the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln (Me: There was a big war. America split in half. But Abraham Lincoln put it back together. So he’s a very good president!)

They had a great time! Everyone was tired by the time we dropped them off at their apartment, and then Dorothee and I drove back to DC, totally exhausted from a day of teacher-voice (sometimes I manage to annoy myself...).

But I had a narrow window – I needed to squeeze in a run before yoga so I headed out the door quickity-quick.

Which resulted in a yoga near-death experience. Well ok, so obviously that is a huge over-exaggeration…but it felt like near-death! A long day + a fast run + hot yoga = really dehydrated and really tired! The Bikram Yoga instructors always say, “If you ever feel dizzy or nauseous or overwhelmed just take a break and lie down.” 

Well on Saturday night I felt all three! It didn’t help that the hot-yoga studio was freakishly hot - we’re talking 115* when I left, which means it had to be way hotter during class!

But I lived to see Sunday. Which is a good thing because I did some serious baking in preparation for the 3^rd and final Lord of the Rings party. This was it – The Return of the King. If you’re rolling your eyes right now, be grateful that the LOTR phase of Eat Run Read is over…BUT if you happen to be a fellow-fan, 

1) read about Party 1 and Party 2 

2) be jealous - I made lembas bread!

3) get excited because The Hobbit is going to start production in February!

Hope you had a good weekend too!

A Week in the Life of Mollie

Unfortunately I do not have a book for you today. I’m currently reading The Master and Margarita, but I’m not ready to post about it yet…so if you’re feeling overdue for a Literary Bite…I was recently reminded of Peace Like A River (thanks to my Book Trivia Flip Calendar). 

That book was so good! Read my review here.

Instead of books, I’m going to blog about my go-to fall-back subject. Myself. (Sorry. Or you’re welcome?)

You all know that I love my weekends, but I want you to know that there is more to my life than eating, running, and reading. Much more. Sometimes too much more! Maybe I’m spreading myself too thin (haha, peanut butter metaphor – love it!), but I really like everything I do and I don’t know what I could/would eliminate. 

So here it is – you be the judge – A Week in the Life of Mollie:

Monday:

6-8am – Yoga.

8-9:20am - House Job frantic work catch-up (I’m kind of my own supervisor on this one, so though I don’t usually procrastinate, sometimes things pile up…).

9:30-5:50 – Work (my “real” job).

5:50-9:20 - I leave work a little bit early on Mondays so that I can catch the Red Line to the Green Line to the F4 bus to get to 64^th Avenue in Riverdale MD. This process takes about an hour and involves way too many people and forms of transportation!

My ultimate destination is the apartment of my refugees. Leyla (30), Hassan (20), Mustafa (20), Neema (15), Husna (11), and Saiha (9) are “my” family of Congolese refugees. They are fantastic! So sweet and enthusiastic – I just love them! I do Refugee Assistance Volunteering, so I’m teaching them English, and helping them with anything they need (i.e. helping get the kids enrolled in school, filling out government forms, teaching them how to use busses to get places, etc.). I’ve never volunteered before, or taught English, and I find it so rewarding! (If you’re interested, check out more info about the program here.)

I can only spend an hour with them, because by 8:09 I need to get on the bus and repeat in reverse my transportation hell. (This week it took 1 ½ hours to get back to Dupont! Me calling my mama: Mooommmmmm I’m never going to get home! The metro is never going to come! Mama: Mollie, get a grip. Where are you and what are you talking about?)

9:30-10:15 – So you know that I do yoga regularly. The reason I can afford this is because I am a "Karma-Yogi." This means that I clean the yoga studio once a week in exchange for 2 free classes a week. It’s a pretty sweet deal, except that after an already 15-hour day when I haven’t eaten since lunch the last thing I want to do is mop floors in a 100+ degrees yoga studio.

10:20 – bedtime - Shower, bowl-o-food on my couch, LOTR, read, go to sleep. Ugh - Mondays are sooo long!

Tuesday:

I rewarded myself for such a long Monday by sleeping in until 8:30. Yay!

9:30-6 – Work.

6-9 – Track practice. I change at work and take the metro to Ballston, and we work out at the Washington Lee High School Track. SpeedyKate usually drive me home (LOVE anyone/everyone who drives me places!).

9-bedtime – Shower, make/eat dinner, LOTR, read, go to sleep.

Wednesday:

6-8 am – Yoga. Ugh – that one was a struggle! Just 9 short hours after finishing the workout and I’m back at it – dripping sweat as I so often am…

9:30-6 – Work.

6-8:30 – I planned on running…but I just couldn’t do it. As I walked home from work, feeling the humidity and seeing the Dupont thermometer register 105* (which was definitely an exaggeration, but still!), I made the executive decision to nap instead. So I power-napped, did laundry, and made/ate dinner.

8:30-midnight – I met friends for Live Reggae Night at 18^th Street Lounge. I loved it! Live music is always fun – you know I’m an enthusiastic dancer – and when I’m just feet away from a trumpet, sax, trombone, and bongo drums you know it’s a good time! This place is great – they have free pita and hummus at happy hour, and there’s no cover until 10pm. 

Midnight-1am – I got home, showered, and should have gone straight to bed. But I got side-tracked by cookies and The Return of the King…so I didn’t go to bed until 1. Poor choice.

Thursday:

6:50 – The extreme poorness of my choice was reinforced when my alarm went off at 6:50am to meet 6x6 for a run. Kill me.

9 am – Work. I’m leaving work early today to catch a bus to Philly to do Something Awful. The good news is that it involves Jess. The bad news is that it also involves 8.4 miles. And 9.2 miles. All in one day. In New Jersey. Again, kill me. Obviously you will get all the details on that later!

So there you have it. Almost a whole week in my life. And that is why I'm tired!

Yoga Pose May

Happy Camel Day,

I'm participating in "Yoga Post May"

It's sponsored by Tina and given to me by Fay...

Ok, enough with the rhymes, I just couldn't resist.

As you may know, I've been doing Bikram yoga twice a week since January. It's interesting how some poses come more easily than others. When I started, I could do supta varjasana (fixed firm pose) no problemo, but ardha chandrasana with pada hastasana (half-moon pose, hands to feet pose)? 

The half-moon part is a-ok, but the hands to feet part (when the teacher is instructing Lock your knees, lock your knees, lock your knees! in varying degrees of annoyingness)? I'm still not sure if it's even anatomically possible!

Ustrasana (camel pose) falls somewhere between wow-this-is-so-easy-I'm-a-yoga-master, and ha-don't-make-me-laugh-not-even-possible.

 I like it because it's hard, and when done properly, it really does give you that stars behind your eyes, mind-exploding feeling (which is a good thing in the realm of yoga). 

You probably don't want to jump straight into doing camel (sidenote: camels are potentially the most awesomely weird bad-ass animals ever.) It's the 22nd pose in the Bikram series (out of 26), so it's a good idea to warm up a bit beforehand. 

So here's what you do:

• Kneel with your knees about 6 inches apart. 
  
• Put your hands on your lower back, like they're in the back-pockets of your jeans.
  

• Slowly bend your head back.
  
• Bend your back to go with your head. 
  
• Reach your right hand down to grab your right foot.
  

• Then your left hand down to grab your left foot.
  
• Your fingers should be on the outside, thumbs on the inside. (Check out my grip...and dirty feet...welcome to summertime!)
  

• Once you have a tight grip, push your hips forward, lift your chest up, and reach your head back.
  
• Hold it for as long as you can.
  

• When you come out of the pose, lift both your shoulders up at the same time (unlike how you went into it one arm at a time).
  
• Bring your hands back to your low back, and straighten up.
  
• Lay down in savasana (dead-body pose).
  
• Repeat.
  

And yes, I did do yoga in the street with PhotoMan taking pictures. Totally acceptable in Dupont Circle...

(And I know it's Tuesday, I promise you a Cake of the Week tomorrow!)

Thoughts on Yoga

I am not “trendy.” 

I don’t like to follow the crowd, and I avoid fads/crazes/manias like the plague. (Not that I’m about to dye my hair blue or go Rebel Without A Cause on you or anything…) BUT, I never hopped on the Atkins bandwagon, bought crocs, explored raw foods, or looked into Scientology. (I think this fad-phobia is part of where my mistrust of cupcakes comes from...)

I’m not contrary for the sake of contrariness though. I’m ok with doing the “follow the crowd” thing if it’s something I actually like (e.g. skinny jeans – what can I say? I have runner legs!). But I try to be cautious and make sure that I really do like something before I join the masses.  

All of this is a very round-about way for me to reveal to you all that it’s been 4 days of early-morning classes, and I like Bikram yoga. I mean actually, truly enjoy it. I hate to admit this, but it does get my day started in an energizing way. My body does feel better as I sit at my desk at work. I am calmer and more balanced. I should feel sleep-deprived and cranky to the max (yoga starts at 6:15am…I can’t seem to get to bed before midnight…you do the math), but I don’t.

Yoga is like the epitome of trendy. It went from granola-eating-hippie to new-age-soccer-mom pretty quickly, and since it’s hit the main stream, it seems to get more popular by the day.  Damn. And now I know why.

The only bad thing about this is that it proves that all those self-righteous yoga-lovers I’ve been hating on for the last 5 years (since the yoga-craze began) were kind of sort of right all along. (There, I said it.)

I don’t know if I will continue with the Bikram thing after my week trial is over (Monday). Mostly because I don’t want to pay for it…but I am putting myself out there for all internet-users to read - I  admit that I like it.

And I’m recommending it! Check out the Bikram studios near you and see if you can go a cheap/free trial…

And read this article about Bikram...interesting...any thoughts? Is Bikram "McYoga"?