I used hypnosis to keep my motivation up however, I really love doing yoga! I find that if friends or family are around during the time that I normally do my routine, I get a bit nervous almost like a junkie. Pranayama is the best! I love doing it after a long body song of asana! It gives me a buzz for days!

I also love the natural centering yoga produces!

:D

Across whatever distance, I send my love,

Michael

we need mo repositive yoga

I took a class last week an dlearned a new sid e stretch, unfortunately I pulled a muscle, so no class to day.

Hi Cathy,

Well that's awesome you learned a new side stretch, not awesome you pulled something. (hopefully it's not the new side stretch that caused it...yikes!)

I'm entirely happy to report that in 5 years I still have yet to hurt anything practicing Yoga (knocks on wood). I have definitely had things that were unpleasant that I needed to work through though. Before I became pregnant, when I was teaching I liked to share that there were three basic emotional & physical stages of any Asana that needed to be explored before experiencing the subtler nuances of an Asana. (I lived by this and it kept me safe & productive, so I shared it in many classes)
1. Complacency
2. Challenge / Work
3. Pain
I shared these because every person has a different concept of what these three things mean and that any one of these stages of an Asana could be damaging or beneficial. So I encouraged everyone to first be honest with their self about where they were at for the day and if their emotional state fit their physical one. If those two states weren't aligned to understand each other then damage could occur, or simply, nothing at all.

Pain to one person might emotionally translate as Complacency or Challenge to another.. i.e. "I can work harder than this, I'm not doing enough." Resulting in injury at times.
And Pain to another person might simply be "I hate this pose, it's so uncomfortable" resulting in a lack of passion for the Asana and leading to a sloppy posture where they're more 'comfortable' & complacent.. which can also lead to injury.

Don't know what sparked that dialogue, just popped in my mind and I've never shared that with anyone here : ) It was one of the most useful tools I learned when practicing. Being honest!

Hope you get to feeling better soon : )

K