I've been doing yoga for about 1.5 years now. This last week I've been tweaking my practice a little bit in an effort to spur some improvement in the poses. My practice usually runs about 40 minutes, and over the last year and a half I've shown definite improvement. My goal about a year ago was to be able to do One-Legged King Pigeon Pose, and I'm just about there. I can't backbend fully to meet my foot, but I can bring the foot up without a strap and bring it almost to my back. For a girl built like me, I don't think that's too bad, so I feel pretty happy with my progress.
But I feel like I'm still lagging in some areas with basic poses. For instance, I have trouble getting my front leg into a nice 90 degree bend in Warrior II. I feel like that's something I should have been able to accomplish by now. I'm also still not able to move in and out of Four-Limbed Staff Pose very well yet; my hips sink right down to the floor before I can get from point A to point B.
So I've decided to do something a bit different: I'm doing fewer poses now in my asana practice. My asana practice has consisted up to now of some prep stretching poses (Potted Palm series), then the entire vinyasa flow series from the Yoga Step-by-Step DVD, then some balance and standing poses, followed by Bridge, Bound Angle, a leg stretch, and finally Savasana.
My new goal is do fewer poses, for now, so I can do them better. Instead of doing the entire vinyasa flow sequence, I now do only the sun salutations followed by the first third of the flow sequence, which involves the chaturanga-cobra-downward dog-Warrior II poses. This way I can concentrate on really getting Warrior II right. I feel like I've been concentrating more up to this point on holding an asana slightly improperly for longer when I should have been working on holding it correctly to start with, and then increasing my endurance in the pose.
And you know what? What an improvement. This weekend I began really focusing on Warrior II. I take the time to get into the pose and I stay in it properly, even if I can only do that for a couple of breaths. My leg is properly bent at 90 degrees, my back baby toe and edge of my foot is pushing against the mat to really stretch my back leg out and to give me support. I can only hold the pose for a couple of breaths, but it's amazing how I felt after I got out of it. Suddenly muscles in my inner thighs I didn't even know were there were feeling strong and worked out after my practice.
I think part of the reason that I haven't been very diligent about my form up to now is because I've been cutting myself some slack. I'm not a thin, lithe person; I'm carrying about 20 or so extra pounds right now (but about five fewer than a couple of months ago thanks to Yourself! Fitness) and given my large frame I can't snake myself into some poses, despite my almost unreasonable flexibility (I can put my feet behind my head without a problem, and have always been able to do that even before yoga).
But this month in Yoga Journal I saw a photo in their article about how yoga can help to lose weight. The photo was of a woman who looked a lot like me: curvy and full-bodied without looking like she was grossly overweight. She was blonde and had that same large Nordic frame that I have. And she was doing a perfect Warrior II, and she looked awesome doing it. And I thought, if she can do a perfect Warrior II, then I can do a perfect Warrior II. I know yoga isn't a competition or about being perfect (you're supposed to do what you can do and be with that), but the point of doing the asanas the way they're supposed to be done, with the right form and alignment, is to reap the maximum benefits from them.
Plus it's the only way I'm going to get that legendary yoga butt I keep reading so much about.
Yesterday while plying up some yarn on the spinning wheel I turned on TLC and watched a show called "Diets From Hell". It was clearly a British show imported and voiced over with an American actor since all the stories except one featured British citizens. The one story at the end that did not featured an American man. The subject of this story was competitive eating. The man featured had won many competitive eating competitions and called himself an athlete while evangelizing the reasons why one who participates in these can legitimately call himself an athlete. I suspect that the reason why this one person featured on the show was American and not British is because competitive eating is a uniquely American thing.
The existence of competitive eating -- beyond the small pie-eating contests at local fairs that have been going on for ages -- actually angers me. I completely lose the non-judgemental, calm, and composed nature that regular yoga practice instills in someone. Competitive eating is representative of everything that's wrong with American society: excess, sometimes harmful, for the sake of excess.
People who participate in competitive eating should be ashamed of themselves, and while I know how morally high-horse this all sounds, I don't care. These people aren't athletes -- they're pigs. Plain and simple. Competitive eating is disgusting on multiple levels. First, it's disgusting that there are people stressing their bodies to extreme levels, gorging themselves and harming their digestive systems in this way, purposefully. This isn't like body building; there's no muscle gain or endurance gain, things that actually help the human body function better. This is slovenly shoving tens of hot dogs into your gorging, stressing stomach.
Second, and more importantly, it's disgusting because we have people starving in our own country, probably even down the street from these competitions, and these people are shoving this food into their faces for the sake of a competition. When I see something like this featured, I can't begin to fathom how these people don't realize how disgusting they appear, both physically doing this and because of the sheer appalling waste of food being gorged.
I thought that the International Federation of Competitive Eating was a joke when I first saw it. I don't think it is. The best part is the list of eating competitions. Notice the sponsorships? The Entenmanns' Pie Invitational. Harrah's World Toasted Ravioli Eating Championship. Krystal Square Off World Hamburger-Eating Championship. They may as well be named "The Artery-Clogging Mostly-Artificial-Ingredients High-Cholesterol High-Fat And-Do-You-Even-Know-What's-In-This-Crap? Gorging Competition". The winners should have their resulting future hospital bills paid by Entenmann's and Krystals.
If I were a millionaire, I would set up and heavily promote an eating competition. I'd prepare the competition by laying out all the hot dogs, hamburgers, or whatever the food of choice is on the table in enormous quantities, a place setting for each competitor. I'd get all the media attention I could possibly buy. I'd invite all the top eaters to come. And then, just as they're seated and ready to go, I'd announce that the competition isn't going to happen. And then I'd tell them that they're each going to march the plates of food in front of them down to the local food bank while the cameras roll, and they're each going to serve what they would have eaten to the local homeless and poor, and they're going to serve it with a smile and an apology.
I was home sick today, which meant that I spent a lot of time laying around in bed, which also meant that I had a lot of time to think about random things. One of those random things was a reflection on all the signs that showed we don't live in Southern California anymore:
- The word "soy" has been replaced in everything by the word "sausage".
- There are advertisements on the radio for a store called Harley's Liquor & Bait.
- If you drive 0.015 miles away from anything familiar you find yourself on some farmer's land with nothing but silos for landmarks. And they all look like the same silo.
- The local talk radio station, which advertises itself as progressive -- and this is in the state's capital city -- and its weekend staple includes the Farm Report show, with "Fabulous Farm Babe Pam Yonke."
- We get weather patterns from Iowa. I forgot Iowa was even a state.
- You mean there were numbers below zero on my thermometer?!
- Everyone is friendly, you can actually breathe real air, and there isn't a Botox needle in sight.
I love it here!