May 2020 Yoga Cross Trainers: The birds of hope are everywhere, listen to them sing

[sherry7899]

Good morning,

Today was:

Yoga Upload Yoga for the Spine
an hour long NIA class, which I really enjoyed

I will try to post later.

Have a good day!
Sherry

[yogapam]

Pat!

[KateTT]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PAT!!! I HOPE YOU HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY! YES I'M SHOUTING IT OUT!

So sorry to be so MIA. I've been taking advantage of good weather and getting lots of yard work done. And a little binge watching the Netflix series The Last Kingdom. The hero is so cute! ;-)

Still meditating every day. I am now at 1511 days in a row..no missed days at all! It really brings me stability and peace.

Yoga this week has been a mix. Power Yoga site put up some new practices.
Mon: Bryan Super Simple but not Easy
Tues: Steve Low Back Maintenance
Wed: Udaya Dan Ward Surfs Up.
Thurs: nothing...running errands (eek)
Fri: I haven't done my practice yet but think I'll close out the week with a little Eoin.

Also still working out every morning so still managing to keep on top of that. Without exercise I think I'd die.

Stay well everyone! So glad to see you're all doing ok!

[Margot]

Hello everyone!

I wanted to pop in and wish Pat a very Happy Birthday! Hope this is the beginning of a great year for you.

Sorry to be MIA too, but I had nothing to report. I tell you, yard work is dangerous work! A week or so ago, I badly twisted my knee while digging up weeds. The pain gradually got worse and worse until I had to finally concede defeat and rest it up. I agree with you Kate; not being able to walk or exercise really got me down. The only thing that cheered me up was making homemade chocolate and then getting to test it.

It wasn't until I found Jessica Valant's knee rehab exercises on YT a few days ago, that I started to see some improvement. Today, I managed a very slow short walk with only a slight twinge. I can't tell you how happy I was to get out of these four walls. The fields were covered in buttercups, which really lightened my spirits.

I'll catch up with you all tomorrow.

Stay safe everyone. Hope you all have a great day.

[cyana]

Happy Birthday, Pat! Best wishes for many years of good health and happiness.

Margot - I hope your knee continues to improve every day.

Kate - Keeping my fingers crossed that we'll have decent gardening weather here this week-end. That's an amazing meditation streak.

Sherry - I would've probably bitten on Lee's latest, but was busy and distracted the past several days and the deadline slipped past me. I like having the downloads in my video library and also being able to download them.

Pam - I don't do FB, IG, etc.. I tell myself I'm in front of a computer all day, and don't need any more excuses to stay there the rest of my waking hours.

Hope everyone has a great week-end!

[yogapam]

Hello everyone!

Today’s offerings:
~Taught Essentrics on zoom
~Neighbourhood walk
~1 hour of yin...forward bends, gentle back bends, hip openers, prone twist, half saddle.

Pat - I hope you had a lovely birthday!
I can do a few chats under duress but don’t enjoy them. My power yoga days are behind me, not wrist friendly and I pay the price if I overdo wristy stuff. I do my push-ups at the barre. I love your My Pillow “tampon”, lol. It was on sale at Amazon so I’ve ordered one. I have a My Pillow travel pillow and I love it for travel & sometimes as an extra support in yin poses. It goes into the washer & washes up so nice too.

Margot - So sorry you’re injured, hope you’re back to 100% soon! Sounds like Jessica’s rehab program was a good find.

Cyana - I can see why you’d avoid social media when you’re on a computer all day. It can be fun, but also get political & contentious at times. I try & avoid that.

Kate - Yes, exercise is therapy, especially at difficult times like this! I’ve been binging British shows on Acorn tv.

Waves to Sherry!

[Pat58]

Hi everyone and thank you for the birthday wishes. {{{HUGS}}} It means a lot. It was a difficult day to be having a birthday, for various mopey reasons. Oh I miss my gym!!

In meditation group, our leader has finished reading from Pema Chodron's Wisdom of No Escape and yesterday we started The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. Today I'll be Zooming a workshop that got postponed because of COVID - about the power of the vagus nerve. I hear about the vagus from time to time, hopefully I'll get some good info from it.

Margot, thank you for visiting. I'm so sorry about your knee, and just when you were recovering from the COVID so well. I am happy that the Jessica Valant rehab exercises are helping.

Thank you Cyana. I hope you get to garden - safely!

Thank you for the shout out Kate! That's an amazing meditation streak, and those sound like great yoga programs for you.

Pam, I hope you enjoy the tampon! I was reading while reclining on the couch last night and propped it under my neck. I'm going to get another one and now based on your report, the travel pillow - and cases for all of them. I think the two tampons would be great under the knees in supported cobbler's pose.

Hi to Sherry and anyone who visits.

[cyana]

Happy Saturday. I went to pick up my farmer's market pre-orders earlier (still no word as to when the market will re-open). Some of the farmers are beginning to harvest a few warm weather veggies like cukes and squash, thanks to hoop houses - hooray! The local strawberries have been amazing this spring and I treated myself to a half dozen chocolate covered strawberries from one of my farmers as a Mother's Day gift (they also have a certified kitchen). I've gotten some really nice radishes the past two weeks. I admit, I'm not the world's biggest radish person, but will eat them roasted. I thought I'd share a link to this recipe as it sounds yummy and I'm going to give it a try: https://therealfoodrds.com/garlic-ro...es/print/9758/

Let me know if you have any other radish suggestions - you know I'm always up for a kitchen experiment.

Even though it's a little on the cooler side today, it's nice and sunny, so I plan to indulge in some functional fitness and work in my yard this afternoon.

Pam - Are the yoga studios re-opening in your area and if so, are they "business as usual"? The local studio did a limited re-opening this week. Only the owner is doing live classes, and she's only allowing five students per class and doing one live class per day. These are also offered as virtual classes, all the other classes are virtual only. I suspect they'll continue doing virtual classes for a while, as she has a fair number of over 65 regulars (in addition to an overall diverse mix of students). I would imagine there are many polarized conversations on social media right now. I got irritated at several people at the market pick-up this AM - people with no masks who were so close they could've performed a colonoscopy on me (uh, thanks, but no thanks!!! ). I just got out of line and stood elsewhere until they moved on. While I don't consider myself to be overly paranoid about the current situation, I also believe in erring on the side of caution - especially since the public health messages have been inconsistent from the beginning and the lack of testing is abysmal.

Pat - Your DH will have a field day teasing you if you end up acquiring a whole fleet of "tampons"!! I'll be very interested to see what they say about the vagus nerve in your workshop. Here's a quickie read link to a Mental Floss article: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/...ut-vagus-nerve

Margot - I thought about you as I was eating my "brunch" salad - topped with a spicy sprout/microgreen mix. I purchased them from my hydroponic lettuce farmer, as he was out of my usual Broccoli Rabe micros.

Sherry - Thanks for the good thoughts, the injured person is my sibling. Long story. He was struck by another driver, has required several surgeries, will need at least two more and is facing a lengthy recovery.

Kate - I agree that exercise is important to keeping a good outlook right now - more than ever.

Hope all is well with Jackie.

[yogapam]

Hello yoginis!

Today was supposed to be a rest day, but didn’t turn out that way
~Neighbourhood walk
~Functional fitness cleaning....not my favourite way to get exercise in....sweeping, mopping, cleaning bathrooms, doing laundry. Normally DH vacuums and I follow behind with the steam mop but he was doing yard & garden stuff. In any case, I shall relax tomorrow!
~1 hour of therapeutic neck stretches with my “torture devices” , and some lovely relaxing yin....reclined leg stretches, hip openers, gentle back bends

Cyana - Oh my, I missed the accident in your post! I am so sorry about your brother, how terribly upsetting! I hope he has a full and uneventful recovery. (((Hugs))))
I’m with you on erring on the side of caution. Other than my outdoor walks, I have been out very little and we mainly order our groceries online for pick up. DH went into a garden center a few days ago, fortunately they were well set up for social distancing and people were compliant.
No fitness studios or gyms open here, not sure when that will happen. There is a gradual reopening starting, but it’s slow. Our new covid cases out here have dropped and levelled out. I will not be frequenting any studios any time soon even if they open. I’m still teaching virtual classes on zoom for now.

Pat - Your meditation group sounds lovely & that workshop sounds very interesting. You’ll have to give us a review. I look forward to getting my tampon, and hope you enjoy the travel pillow!

I chat with Jackie quite often and she’s good. Hopefully she’ll pop in soon.

Waves to Sherry, Kate, Margot, & Jackie!

[Margot]

Happy Sunday everyone!

As well as my daily knee rehab exercises, yesterday I did:
- Lucy W-R Seated Cardio - 10 min
- Jessica Smith Seated Strength - 11 min
- BG Strong Abs #3 - 10 min
- 1 hour gentle walk
- YR Yin for Legs

Today:
- epilates Fitball Class
- BG Strong Booty #1
- ETV Toning for Beginners with Sahra (with some modifications)

I'm planning on doing Leila's Spine or Hips short classes on MFML tonight.

In some way, this knee injury has been a blessing in disguise. I've realised how weak I am in my left glutes and to some extent my inner thighs and hamstrings. I was shocked how hard I was finding some of the glute work - (single-leg bridges on my left side with the foot on the chair seat is a killer)! The good news is that already my left calf, quads and IT band are not as tight as they usually are).

Pam - Doing housework isn't my favourite form of exercise either! My DH also vacuums. Maybe, it's more manly to vacuum than to dust.

Cyana - I'm so sorry to hear about your brother. I'm sending him all good wishes for continued improvement in his recovery. Your Farmers' Markets always sound so nice. We have them over here but they're always so crowded, so I've avoided them in the past. I do like to buy fresh local produce though and lately we've been buying directly from the farms. I've been sprouting chickpeas, buckwheat and quinoa this week. Maybe next week, I'll try the micro sprouts again. My broccoli sprouts turned out well but the fennel ones were a complete bust.

Pat - I think you'll enjoy the Untethered Soul. I bought that book years ago and remember it as one of my favourite self-help books at the time. I'm very excited to hear about your workshop. I've enrolled in a workshop too on the Vagus nerve, which is coming up on the 19th. I've also been reading a good book on it and although it is a bit dry and hard-going at times, it does have some interesting exercises at the back of the book. They remind me a little of Somatics/Feldenkrais.

Sherry - Did you buy the new Eoin Finn streaming video on Vimeo? I only bought the longer version (around 40 mins I think). I've only done it once but quite enjoyed it.

Waves to Kate and Jackie and anyone else popping in today.