December 2019 Yoga Cross Trainers: May your days be merry & bright!

[yogapam]

A warm welcome to all as we close out 2019!

If you’d like more yoga in your life, you’re in the right place! Whether yoga is your first love or a welcome addition to your other workouts, feel free to roll out your mat & join us. We enjoy a wide variety of activities along with yoga, Qi Gong, & meditation.

[yogapam]

Hello everyone!

Thought I’d post personals & today’s workouts here as December 1 is almost here....
~3 km walk
~Jessica’s 6 Week WS: Lower Body Sculpt - another good glute focused workout
~Headstand & chi-toe sit - need both of these daily!
~Gaia: AMY4YW Hip Openers - A perennial fave! Trying to use Gaia more as my subscription ends in Jan & I’m not renewing

Pat - Thumbs down to the grumpy clerk! I bet tensions run high at WW in Jan! I’m glad you’re in for the sadhana again!

Sherry - Your baking always sounds sooo yummy! Thank for the links to those yin practices, they look lovely. Glad you’re also in for the sadhana! I’ll put a GD post about it up soon & start the check in on the 21st. Start day is always flexible, but I think I’ll start on the 21st for a change.

Margot & Cyana - I thought of you on my walk today. There is a popular scuba dive site just down the road from us. A lot divers were out today all decked out in their dry suits. Brrrr I shiver just thinking about it as it was in the 30s today!

Jackie - Ugh that’s a lot of snow! Hopefully they’ll cancel classes at college until the snow stops & the roads are cleared. I hope poor little Aubrey is feeling better, she’s had a rough month!

Waves to Laura & anyone else who stops by!

[cyana]

Last night I did:
2:43 chi-toes practice - the inspirational song of the day was "Heat Wave" by Martha and the Vandellas, one of my favorite oldies. This song is always on my play list when I'm flying and I wonder if my seatmates wonder why someone stuck in a coach seat is sitting there with such a big smile as I listen to Martha Reeves sing.
YT - Timberlake Yoga - Yin Yoga without props - Practice Gratitude. Posted 11.21.2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDVZfB8o0uk . Sherry posted about this instructor yesterday in GD and it didn't take much coaxing to get me to do yin while drooling over the beach scenery. Thank you, Sherry! Brittany is very soft spoken and this is a yin practice you could do anywhere. My only complaint - half saddle. That is definitely one of my nemesis poses, so I guess I need to work on that, too!

Pam - I may sign up for Sadhana although I swear I do best when I do "Secret Sadhana" and don't make my intentions public, LOL!!! I got Kat's email today with the new classes of the week and I'm excited to do the next installment in Mimi's series. I was also happy to see Nikita doing a meditation series. I like Nikita, but some of her practices are more vinyasa heavy than my wrists would prefer. I am going to sign up for the Frazzle Free Festivities Challenge that starts today with a practice from Jean Hall. I am such a cold water wimp.....never really had any desire to train to do dry suit diving (edited that to read dry suit since I have multiple wet suits!), although I've seen some incredible video from diving in your part of the world.

Back later with today's work-out. I think I hear the cat barfing up a hair ball, so I need to go do some search and clean up work!

[Margot]

Hello everyone!

Oops! I'm getting behind again. Now that my exam is over, I'm getting ready for our trip this coming weekend. I have a busy week ahead, so thought I'd start my packing early.

Yesterday was:
- Mimi K-D - Healthy Muscles, Joints & Tendons Practice #1
- PA - Foot and Leg Alignment
- Barlates Fusion with band

Today:
- ChiBall - Awaken your spine (has a nice warrior series)
- ePilates - all short segments for Legs, Arms, Core & Posture.
- MFML Mimi #2 restorative practice

Pam - Thank you for starting us off. I'd like to join in with the Sadhana but I'm not sure how the wi-fi will be once we start travelling. I looked up the Graston technique but my fascia treatment isn't like this at all. My therapist uses her hands only and works on finding fascia restrictions in the body (working through the layers), as well as finding connections between areas of fascia that may be pulling on each other, if that makes sense. PS I'm only a warm water diver too. My DH used to dive in Puget Sound. Too cold for me though, brrrrr...

Cyana - I like how you use great music to make chi-toes more enjoyable. I remember the days when we had to deal with cats barfing up hair balls. They were both long-furred, so it was a regular event. Our poor carpets took a beating but we still loved them all the same (the cats, not the carpets).

Sherry - Glad you had such a fun and stress-free Thanksgiving.
Thanks for recommending Timberlake yoga. I almost fell asleep just previewing the video; it was so relaxing. I've bookmarked it for tomorrow.

Jackie - Hope you and Aubrey are feeling much better today. ((Hugs))

Pat - It's great you're happy with your phone, despite the grumpy clerk. I guess everyone is so stressed at this time of the year. My DH pushed me into getting a new cell phone. Mine was positively ancient!

Laura - Hope you're having a fun trip.

Hope everyone has a happy day.

[cyana]

Pam - Before I forget - did you find Gaia to be worth it? I get emails from FMTV (Food Matters TV) and within the past couple of weeks they've announced some sort of partnership with Gaia and through today they're offering one month access to FMTV/Gaia for $1, then you can either do a monthly membership or pay $99/year. I'm dropping my auto renew yoga studio membership, as there just aren't enough classes during the times that I can go, so I'm going to buy class pass packages once it expires. My previous employer gave us a generous fitness benefit that covered almost 50% of my yoga membership, so it doesn't make financial sense for me to continue at the auto-renew monthly unlimited level without the fitness reimbursement and I'm trying to decide if I want to try something else streaming or just keep that money in my pocket.

Margot - I've seen videos of diving in Puget Sound - in addition to the cold water there are some ripping currents you have to work around!! Not for the faint of heart or rookies, that's for sure. My aging kitty guy goes through barfing cycles, so there's a reason I haven't replaced the carpet in my bedroom even though it looks so terrible. Definitely love the cat far more than my flooring even I was awakened at 1 AM to the sound of kitty claws on the mat of my JumpSport rebounder. Fortunately no damage, except to my sleep. He's usually good about scratching in the appropriate locations, so I suspect he was trying to get a human to wake up and hang out with him. And he succeeded, as DH got up. He definitely has DH's number!

Pat - I hope you enjoy your new phone despite the grumpy clerk. I had a Samsung Galaxy 3 that I used for I don't know how many years and had no complaints with it. I also had a Galaxy 4 work cell for over 5 years. My Samsungs were on different carriers and both worked fine. DH is the one who finally pushed for new phones a couple of years back and I ended up with an LG and I'm happy with it. Confession: I'm really not persnickety when it comes to my cell phone as long as it works.

[yogapam]

Hello December!

Cyana - I’ll have to look at those new practices on MFML! I enjoyed Gaia, got a really good BF deal last year, IIRC $49 USD for a year which was $65-ish CAD . If they had offered that again I probably would have renewed. $99 + the exchange was over my budget. It was good, lots of nice yoga & Pilates, much of which is from their dvds. My fave is still MFML & the 50% off for life is keeping me there for sure. It’s such pure well instructed yoga with great variety. I also bought a Groupon for The Yoga Collective...a year for, IIRC, about $25. I haven’t started it yet, but will soon, so I’m set for yoga. I also subscribe to ETV and have considered a barre subscription but haven’t gone there yet. I’ve done Callanetics before and may do a month here and there. It’s reasonable at $9.99/month. I’d also do Ellen again for a month here & there.
ETA I still have a yoga download subscription but it’s been very glitchy for me so I’ve kind of abandoned it. It was a 50% off deal in the spring.

Margot - Your fascia therapist must be very intuitive to do that work, she sounds amazing! Yes cold water diving has no appeal to me! Actually I am a very strong swimmer on the surface, but have no desire to go under the water, lol. I used to swim lengths a lot at our local community fitness center but it’s not a public facility & I stopped when they doubled the membership fees. When we move to the city in the spring there’s a pool nearby and I plan to get back to it.

Back later to post my workouts....

[Pat58]

Thank you for starting us Pam!

Just marking my spot goils. I'll check in tomorrow and say hi. I am so glad November is behind me now!

[cyana]

Today:
Chi-toes practice: 3 minutes. Song of the day: Crazy by Cee Lo Green - the Live From Daryl's House Version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKQuhqoWNuQ
I thought Crazy was a good description for my daily immersion into agony, LOL. "I remember when I lost my mind......."
MFML: QiGong and Restorative Yoga: Finding Balance - Mimi Kuo-Deemer

I was going to do two more practices, but DS called and that's always a lengthy phone chat. Then it was time for dinner.

I officially signed up for MFML's new challenge - Frazzle Free Festivities - 32 days of yoga practices that are supposed to be warming and supporting and includes a good bit of yin and restorative. I'm supposed to get my first email at midnight. You can see the list of classes included in the challenge on MFML and I was going to start today, but decided I'd wait until I got my daily notification.

The only Black Friday shopping I've done so far is to order 2 bottles of styling products from Jessicurl, LOL. Contemplating some yoga accessories since I won't be going to as many studio classes going forward.

[yogapam]

Today’s workouts:
~Essentrics Rebalance & Reboot: Full Body Stretch
~3 km walk - It was trying to snow, but thankfully it wasn’t quite cold enough!
~Jessica’s Feel Good Fusion: Fusion Strength - This was nice, a little on the gentler side, but lots of nice balance work. It was a bit longer than I like at 45 min.
~Headstand, posture focused upper back acupressure, & 2 min toe sit I definitely need to do this one more often!
~MFML: Evening Based Floor Flow

Waves to all!

[JackieB]

Oh gee I am behind.

The sickies and the snow--ugh. It finally stopped this afternoon. DS and his gf will go back to school in Duluth tomorrow afternoon...the university cancelled classes tomorrow. Duluth got 20 inches of the white stuff and I'm sure it's taking some serious work to clear the roads and parking lots.

I did get out to have coffee with a friend today. I'm still a little under the weather and Aubrey is, too.

I did do a couple workouts...part of a CS episode, then a 10 minute Barre3, then some Essentrics floorwork.

I am persnickety with my cell phone. My Samsung Galaxy (I think 6 but not sure) burned out last year at the Midwest Getaway and I ended up switching to a Google Pixel because I run everything on Google including my Essentrics class music on Google Play. My only complaint is no headphone port which they now have on the Pixel 4. I have wireless bluetooth headphones for walking with my phone and listening to audiobooks.

Waves to all....I can't believe it is December!