A Half-way Treat for Me

Before I got sidetracked by my sudden internet fame I had been planning on celebrating being half way through the yoga challenge with you. Celebrate it!

Or your big bird and rotting steak costumes.
Whatever says "Good Times!" to you

 

I hope you all have your sparklers aloft and party hats adorned.

I have completed, in fact, sixteen says of the thirty-day-challenge. I will still be getting up at 6:00am tomorrow for class though, making it far more likely that I will watch Party Monster than live it.

It's been going well. Only the past couple of days have I started to feel worn down. I think I need to start drinking much, much more water. I feel perpetually thirsty. But then again, I'm peeing all the time! Who knew thirty days of yoga would be so taxing?

Now that I am half-way, I thought I would set some goals for myself: my goal up to this point was survival.

I have already noticed that my spine and my hamstrings have both become more flexible. The latter, in particular, is a huge accomplishment. I am still looking like my sad pink washing gloves laid out in my drying rack right now when I attempt standing split (who are the freaks of nature who can do standing split???), but it's coming along.

I've decided that I really want to work on my depth in Dancer's pose. I have never been good at it, but I've found that, by sticking to proper alignment, I have been slowly but surely making progress. I also have decided to conquer my fear of Wheel. I have been feeling much more empowered and much less like I'm going to die in Bridge, and with my increased back flexibility, I think it's time to pony up and give it a shot.

I bought myself a little treat yesterday too, a congrats on making it thus far. Ok. Only kind of. Mostly it was a way of getting out of doing laundry so often. I invested in another yoga towel! And I even branched out; under the recommendation of Guillaume, with whom I'm secretly in love, I bought a Manduka towel, rather than another Yogitoes. This was a grudging recommendation, I think because the Manduka towel was almost 20$ cheaper (40$CDN, as opposed to the 58$CSN Yogitoes), but he was clearly backing Manduka.

So what's the difference?

Well, the Yogitoes, which I've been using for a year now, have plastic beading on one side, to better grip your mat, even after you've thoroughly soaked it with your sweat [groooooossssssss]. They also are the market favourite, available in a wide array of colours and patterns and sold at corporate yoga's favourite salon, LuluLemon (I have zero hate on for Lulu, but many of the more pretentious yogis do. Probably because they find it pretentious and elitist. Ironic). The Manduka mats, on the other hand, do not have this gummy grip tactic, and are generally much more muted and "calming" in colour, but are much more absorbant.

I thought the lack of beading would prove to be a problem. And I wont lie - it is. Particularly in any pose where I need to walk my feet back (ie. transitioning from Warrior I to Warrior II), the towel gets dragged around with my foot. It is annoying, and only having done two classes with it thus far, I still find myself anal retentively adjusting it mid-class, when my attention should clearly be elsewhere.

That said, the big advantage the Manduka towel has over the Yogitoes makes this slight inconvenience inconsequential: as the towel gets damp, it gets grippier. This is the opposite of what happens with the Yogitoes, and I often find myself (particularly if my mat hasn't been washed since last class - which these days is more often than not [grooooooosssssss]) having my hands slip away from my in Downward Facing Dog. I would really rather not crash face first into my mat half way through class. But often times when we slow down to take a few breaths in downward-dog, I have that stomach-dropping experience of having one hand suddenly skid over the top of my Yogitoes. The fact that my abundant sweat [grooooossssss] becomes an aid, rather than an obstacle, with the Manduka towel is invaluable.

So, if I can learn to pick up my feet, the Manduka towel gets my gold star. Thanks Manduka, for keeping me for having sudden and embarrassing encounters with gravity.