My Yoga, My Health

I slept horribly last night.  I keep thinking about my jerk set I have to do on Saturday and playing out different scenarios.  Trying to relax, breathe, focus, see and hear my breath and body go through the movements.  I've got a pretty good couple of GS sets to practice tomorrow afternoon and then I'll put the brakes on training a bit, but especially overtraining.  I'm always wanting to throw an extra yoga class into my week, or a 30-45 min walk, neither I really need to do, and with a competition in 5 days I really don't need to do them at all!  It's that old overexercising mindset, the old habit of thinking I should try to burn as many calories I can, even though I know it's not the way it works!

But Monday is a yoga day, so before the crack of dawn I found myself working out all the stiff and tight parts first thing this morning at 5:30am.  My biggest motivation for my practice these days is to stretch out my hands/grip, hamstrings/quads, traps and biceps to benefit my sport training.  Even though I have time to go to yoga tomorrow I won't.  It's not a yoga day!  I'll go on Wednesday and Friday.  Business as usual, but more relaxed, not trying to "workout". The "workout" is coming on Saturday!


Backbends are the most difficult postures for me to practice so early in the morning.  And for me, this posture, Camel pose (Ustrasana) is more about opening up my chest and stretching my bicep muscles, not so much about bending backwards.  I haven't looked at my yoga practice as a yoga practice at all in so many months.  Perhaps because I felt I lost it completely after my hamstring injury.  It forced me to come to terms with what is more important


What is more important is what I wrote about a few days ago in my post Freedom.  Living with the physical freedom of moving without restriction or pain.  Sure, tightness and stiffness can feel like pain, but it's not! And when you do experience real pain and/or restriction then you beg to have back the other minor irritations!   For now I'll appreciate the time I get to take to simply stretch.  No pressure to do the postures perfectly, or even to improve the postures themselves, but the focus is on the improvement of the overall health of my body.


It's my yoga, it's my health.  I'm very thankful that I have a place to go and do backbends.  On my own I would probably never do them...no, I know I would never do them!