PR During Rehab

*More about women’s health and pelvic floor stuff in this post. Dudes might want to skip this one too*

Let’s be honest here. I’ve been in a funk. I fairly certain that I have SAD (seasonal affective disorder) and the gloomy/rainy weather isn’t helping a ton. I was also having a little pity party regarding my sciatic pain and I was secretly afraid this would mean the end of me squatting, deadlifting, thruster-ing, clean & jerk-ing and snatching. It made me really sad that I was thinking about giving up, but the butt pain was annoying to no end. Ok, maybe I wasn’t really sad about never having to snatch ever again, but that’s a different story. I have a tendency to keep quiet when I feel this way because my Mom always said to keep your mouth shut if you have nothing nice to say…

So yeah, annoying funk. When I get in a funk, I eat. Not always good food choices. My new jeans are feeling snug and so are my scrub tops again. In order to snap myself out of the funk and emotional eating, I reached out to Kathleen and Courtney and we have embarked on a (second for me) Whole30 together. If one of us falls off the wagon, we ALL have to do 15 burpees… per cheat snack. We started last Thursday and so far, everyone has been on plan! Way to go ladies!

I have also had my 1st appointment with the pelvic floor physic. It was interesting and mildly uncomfortable at times. I mean, where else do you get little stickers (electrodes) put next to your bum hole and vagina, hooked up to an ultrasound and get to see the strength of your inner abdominal muscles and rectal muscles as well. Add to that the presence of an almost 3-year-old who was peeking under my gown and asked A LOT of questions and you have a pretty good picture of my appointment.

The findings were interesting though:

• I have weak rectus abdominis (front abs)
• My abdominal muscles remain contracted too tight, even at rest.
• I can’t hold a deep abdominal contraction for 10s during kegels
• I get better control of those contractions if I think more about contracting my anus than if I focus on my abdomen.
• My internal obliques and transversus abdominis are working overtime in order to compensate

In terms of regular physic, here’s what’s wrong with me as well:

• I have too much mobility and squat too low, curving my spine at the bottom of the squat, resulting in my obliques taking over and adding a toll onto my lower back
• Too much mobility on the erg as well, resulting in the same outcome as in the squat

What I’m doing to fix this:

• Lots of kegels (we’re talking 60 reps of 10s contractions with holding and 10s rest)
• a weird contraction of the deep abs while lying on the floor and opening my legs sideways, then extending the leg out straight.
• firing the small deep posterior chain before doing any squatting or any heavy lifting
• contracting my pelvic floor muscles when lifting heavy, or even lifting the girls
• one-legged step-ups in the stairs and focusing on not tilting my pelvis
• Squatting down to a med ball to limit my squat depth and ensuring I don’t squat too low (still below parallel, but not ass-to-the-grass

It doesn’t sound like much and when I do my keels and pelvic floor exercises I pretty much look like I’m just standing or lying down and staring into nothing-ness, but it’s a lot of hard work. I also started these on last Thursday.

What I have noticed so far:

• I haven’t had a flare up in my sciatic pain since Thursday.
• The numbing I felt in my lower back has decreased tremendously. So much so that I recently sat down and was amazed to notice what it felt like to sit down and not have that low numbing pain in my back
• I did thrusters today, PR’d my 1RM and there was no leakage
• I sneezed twice today without crossing my legs and also without experiencing any leakage
• I’m not feeling any discomfort in my sciatic or lower back at all after doing the thrusters today
• The pelvic floor PT gave me the green light to start doing my ROMWOD again, now I just have to clear it with the regular PT!

This is huge people! After 5 + years of lower back pain/ butt pain/ sciatic pain, I’m walking almost pain-free and it feels awesome. It has brought back a little of positiveness in my life and it makes the world of a difference in my day-to-day life.

Ok, enough about my lady bits and let’s now focus on the WOD today:

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1RM Thruster: I warmed up to 65# before the timer went off and I planned on doing those E2M with 5# increases on each rep. I was hoping to hit 90# on my last rep, which would have been a 5# PR. Here’s what I ended up doing

65#-70#-75# with the assist of a med ball behind me in order to know when to stop dropping. I almost tripped on it when I did 80#, so I decided to try without any assist on the last 2 reps. 85# went well and Coach AJ told me I had good speed. I failed 90#. I managed to squat it and get up with it, but I couldn’t press it overhead. I was slightly disappointed. I humm-ed and aww-ed for a little bit and then decided to try for a 2#-PR anyway and go for 87#. I went to get the fractional plates and added them onto my bar. I had about 20 seconds left before the 12 minutes were up and i took a deep breath and went for it! I was so happy to get it up and above my head! I didn’t have much expectations that I would PR while rehab-ing my sciatic, but this was a nice welcomed surprise! 🙂

Double Tabata Row: A Tabata is an interval workout. You do 8 rounds of 20s work / 10s rest. Because it was so intense for my sciatic, I chose to go for the Assault bike instead of the erg. I probably could have done a regular Tabata, but not a double one. I set myself up next to Marika (who was on the Airdyne) and off we went. For the 1st Tabata, I managed to keep my intervals at 4 cals for all but the 7th interval! I was disappointed, but kept going and managed to get 4 cals for the 8th round. As soon as we entered the second part of the Tabata, I was just trying my best to keep each interval at 3 cals. I surprised myself by getting 4 cals for a few rounds, but I mostly stayed at 3. I was glad when It was over and my quads were throbbing nicely and seizing up slowly. I got off the Assault bike, got on all fours and then slumped onto my belly on the floor. I caught my breath and went to write my score on the board. I was shocked when I saw that Marika’s lowest score was 6 cals! Holy crap! I thought I’d worked hard for all my rounds, but my score was a measly 3! Coach AJ told us that they don’t count calories the same way and after doing some research online, I found in some forums that people mentioned the Assault bike was scoring about 1/2 the cals and distance when compared to the Airdyne. Good to know I wasn’t so far behind then!

I’m just happy with how today’s session went. I know you can’t always have great workout days, but it sure start the day the right way when you do well on the Skill and WOD!

Putting In The Work, Reaping The Slow Progress

I’ve been at this Crossfit craziness for a little over two years now and to say that I absolutely love it is an understatement. Don’t get me wrong, there are days when I truly don’t enjoy the WODs (ahem, crazy warm-up sesh followed by DT, ahem), but I know and trust my coaches and I know that, in the end, no matter how much I scale back, I am still working towards becoming fitter.

From the beginning of my little journey, I have always wanted to make sure that I understand the mobility behind a lift before I start increasing my weights. It has sometimes been frustrating to see others progress faster, to see them putting heavier plates on the barbells or to see them master a lift or a gymnastic move that still evades me, but, overall, I have managed to stay true to my promise of moving properly before adding weight. Two years into this, I am between Novice and Intermediate (as per this chart) for all my lifts. I’m sure I could probably be a solid intermediate or even higher if I trained more, but I am a wife, a mom and I have a job, therefore, I am pretty happy with where I stand today.

Up until recently, I was using 55# for all my lifts during WODs and I kind of promoted myself to 65# a few weeks ago. It has been challenging for certain WODs, impossible for others and has felt comfortable for some. See? Intermediate! 😉

Here’s what we did today:

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We really warmed-up our hips and ankles and the mood was pretty cheerful throughout the warm-up. Then, it was time to get serious and tackle this WOD.

Triple Treat

I warmed-up with 55# and although the thrusters felt somewhat easy and the deadlifts were truly easy, I knew it would become taxing towards the end. Still, I unloaded my bar, put on 15# plates on each end and was ready to tackle this one at 65#. Coach AJ came by and told me she wanted me to really be explosive from the hips in the BJ and actually move my hips. I have a tendency to keep my hips at the same height and only pull my legs up like  a frog jumps. It makes things easier for this short stuff to get on the box, but it’s not proper form. I did a few reps and it was definitely more challenging, but it gave me something new to work on, form-wise.

I managed to do all 6 rounds with a squat thruster for my 1st rep of every thrusters and keep going from there. The deadlifts were definitely the easiest (for me) in this WOD and I tried my little heart out to really engage my hips in the BJ. That made for some very noisy landings on the box, but I think, overall, I did ok. I could tell on my last round that my form was slowly reverting to my old habits, but I was still determined to work on these! Even though this WOD was a “no score” one, we were able to keep track of our times for each rounds. Here’s how I did:

1. 0:52
2. 0:50
3. 0:46
4. 0:45
5. 0:43
6. 0:42

I was pretty pleased that I was able to shave off 10 secs of my initial time for this!

After the WOD, Coach AJ came by and told me I made her “want to try that ROMWOD thing. You’re moving so well and your squats are so good!” It’s nice to know that what I’ve been working so hard on for the past 2 years is finally paying off and people are noticing.

She asked me if I felt any different in my performance and, funnily enough, today is the first day that my sciatic is truly killing me post WOD since I have started the ROMWOD. Is it because I changed my BJ? Not sure, but it sure is (literally) a giant pain in my butt. I went to the mall with Béatrice after my workout and I couldn’t walk while holding her in my arms, it was hurting too much. Even with her walking by herself, I was limping next to her while we walked really slow. I guess it’s really time I book a chiro appointment for some active release therapy!

As for ROMWOD, I can definitely see an improvement in my flexibility, but I’m not sure how it’S helping me in my performance overall. I really enjoy the increased flexibility I have gained in the past 2 weeks and am looking forward to keeping it up, even if it feels like relaxation most of the time.

Seated Straddle, 2 weeks ago, after 4 minutes into the pose. Head isn’t touching the forearms, shoulders are up.

Seated Straddle, 2 days ago, at the beginning of the 4-minute hold of the pose. Forehead is almost touching the forearms

Seated Straddle, 2 days ago, at the end of the 4-minute hold. My head is past the forearms and almost touching the ground. Definitely an improvement!

Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda

I came home late from a long day at work. I stayed a few hours extra to help out a co-worker who had some family business to attend (don’t worry, she’ll come in early for me next week, so I’ll have a short day!), but that meant I did 14hrs at work yesterday. I managed to squeeze my ROMWOD in during a short break and it felt good to be stretching at the end of the day!

Pigeon pose in my scrubs!

I got home after Ben did and we hung out a bit on the couch before I headed to bed. I fell asleep around midnight and the night seemed very short when Rina came to wake me up at 0600 this morning. I got up, made her lunch, got breakfast going, started with my weekly cleaning and had to leave it unfinished because it was time to head into the Box.

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I felt like quitting and heading back home during the warm-up so I knew I would struggle today to get it all done!

Skill: 3RM Front Squat (12 mins)

We had 12 minutes to find out our 3RM on the front squat and although I had planned on reaching 120#, I stopped after I did crappy reps at 115#. Energy was low, I was stripping my butt on the up and I knew the WOD would be brutal (for me) so I saved what little I had left in the tank for the WOD.

WOD: Nancy

I decided to do FG1+ yet again today. That’s what I had done the last time I did this one and considering I felt drained of life, I knew it would be a definite challenge. To add to all that, it was also raining. Perfect weather for my crappy mood and to go running outside!

3-2-1- Go!

There was no way I would keep up with Linda today: she’s a faster runner and I’m pretty sure she managed her OHS non-stop for all her rounds as I had to break mine mostly into sets of 5 (with the occasional 7 in there).

I knew I was in trouble when I started bawling on my 1st round of OHS. I tried to regulate my breathing as best I could on the run and finally got things somewhat under control, but mentally, I had already checked out. You know it’s bad when I get it into my head that “I’ll recover in the run!” Ha! Yep! That thought actually crossed my mind quite a few times during the WOD. Everybody was done by the time I reached my 4th round of OHS, so I kept going and went out by myself for my last run. I came back in with everyone cheering me on I finished at 24:53 and crumpled to the floor to get a good cry. Who knew I was this tired? After I left a puddle of tears on the floor, I got up and put my stuff away, all the while thinking I should have listened to myself and gone home after the warm-up. I. AM. SPENT! It took me 1:36 longer this time around to finish Nancy at the same weight I had done previously. However, apparently our 400m run isn’t 400m. It’s somewhere between 440-460m, depending on who you talk to. Therefore, I guess I PR’d today even though I really didn’t!

Well, maybe I’d done better if Ryan had actually been there for me today! 😉

I came back home to finish my cleaning, had a quick bath, made lunch and roasted pumpkin seeds (’tis the season!) Béatrice refuses to play nicely upstairs so I’ll try to fit in my ROMWOD for today and will relax a bit before going for a nap before my night at work tonight.

What Was That?!?

I went to bed at a decent hour last night, woke up, got Rina ready for school and then even had some time to do a little food prep before heading in to the Box. I had read the workout last night and I knew it was going to be a tough one, but I thought to myself: “It’s DT. You can do it at 65# if you strategize appropriately about it.” RIIIIIiiiiiiight!

That was before somebody pointed out that the warm-up was x3 this morning. I had read it as x1 only. Holy Cow, this was gonna be hard!

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Warm-up (aka WOD #1):  3x

• 500m row
• 15 burpees
• 30 light RKBS

Myeah, ok. I’ll get right on that! There was a few of us and in a way, I’m thankful for that because that meant I had to do 0.6km on the death bike for my second round since none of the ergs were available. To say that I enjoyed this much more than the erg is an understatement. At least, I was benefiting from the wind I was generating on the death bike vs. the erg. I did all my rounds with an 18# KB and did all my burpees Rx, but I had to stop twice during my last row. That was intense to say the least and it put me in a foul mood. How was I supposed to use 65# for DT now, when I felt like I had nothing left in the tank? I warmed up to 55# and called it a day. I felt like wiping down the barbell before I got started because it was already full of sweat from the hang power cleans!

Yep!

WOD: DT

3.2.1.Go!

I managed all my rounds with unbroken DL. I would go up to 11, take a few breaths and then do my last rep before transitioning to the Hang Power Cleans. Those were the hardest for me. I had to break most rounds into sets of 4-4-1 and that made me waste a lot of time. I just didn’t have the forearms to push through. I did manage to do all push jerks unbroken, which tells me I probably should have stuck to my idea of using 65#, but I was too angry. The amount of swearing I did in my head was pretty phenomenal, even for me! Thanks goodness I managed to keep my mouth shut and just grind through it. I could tell I had my “pissed off” face on and the first thing that came out of my mouth when I was done was: “That was stupid!”

I was really trying to finish before Linda and I didn’t manage to do so, but I hung on to her pretty well and I did whatever it took for me to get over this insane warm-up/WOD. It’s rare that a workout puts me in such a bad mood and I’ve been trying to understand why it has done so. Was it because I felt drained form the warm-up? Was it because I didn’t use 65# like I had originally planned on doing when I misread the WOD last night? Was it because it was a grey/rainy day? I still don’t have the answer to that and I’m still pretty mad at the whole thing. I know I should let it go and I will, but it is surprising to me how upset I am at the whole thing. I finished with a time of 10:25, which puts me right in the middle of the pack (I think) and makes me think I scaled appropriately. I’m just not sure why I had such a violent reaction to that WOD. I spoke to Rob afterwards and he seemed to think like me. We were both agreeing that we HATED this one! Oh well, it’s done and over with and I now have a record for this Hero WOD, but it sure didn’t make me feel like one when I was doing it. Gotta check that mental fortitude and my internal self-talk, once again!

I came home, finished my food prep for the week, finished laundry and now have a luxurious 15-mins break to lounge before I go get Rina at the bus stop. Then, it’s prepping dinner, bath time and ROMWOD for me when the girls get to bed. I’m truly hoping the ROMWOD will help lift up my sourpuss mood!

That’s what I should have done today!

Applying Crossfit Principles In Your Everyday Life

Sorry about being MIA lately, it’s been slightly chaotic between being at work and moving to our first house!

I finished work yesterday morning and slept for 4hrs before I tackled unpacking the bathroom, linen closet and our master bedroom. It took me a long time to unpack and refold everything, but I finally got it done around 1900, just in time to put the girls to bed for the night. To say I was done for the day is an understatement.

We woke up early (thank you skylights without any blinds) and got to moving our furniture outside of our bedroom so the carpet cleaner would have ample room to do his job upstairs. The carpets are pretty cruddy and I’m hopeful he’ll be able to get the back in shape.

While we were moving furniture around, I managed to move both of my tallboy by myself. I had removed the drawers to make them lighter and then braced my core, picked them up in a front rack position with my arms folded and moved them to the room we are keeping empty until we are done painting (it will become Rina’s room once we’re done). Then, it was onto the tall dresser. We tilted it down and both Ben and I grabbed onto it and moved it quickly into the spare bedroom. Bam! Our bedroom was ready to go!

The girls’ bedroom was fairly easy. I managed to move Rina’s bed and mattress all by myself and Ben and I moved their dresser together. We didn’t bother removing the drawers out of that one and it was fairly heavy. We both went down to a deep squat, grabbed hold of the bottom of the dresser and lifted it up. I won’t lie, it was a heavy squat for me, but we managed to get it done! A year ago, I probably would have shied away from lifting all that furniture. Today, although it was somewhat challenging, I felt confident we could get everything done with both Ben and I. It just goes to show how Crossfit has helped me in my everyday life. I am now more functional and can lift much heavier than I was able to do a year ago. Winning all the way if you ask me! 🙂

Now, Ben is at work and I’ve put most of the furniture back to where it belongs by myself (except for that super tall dresser… No way I can do that one alone, cross fitter or not! I will have to do it with Ben tonight when he gets home. A quick trip to the grocery store by foot with the girls and a healthy lunch before they went down for their nap. I have folded laundry, cleaned the dishwasher so we can start using it cleaned up some more furniture and now, I will sit with my hot water bottle on my lower back while I take a break on the couch. Tomorrow should be another busy day of managing the girls while trying to unpack after an early Crossfit class. This will be my routine until we are officially done with the paint and officially moved in! 🙂

Back at it

Sweet Rina,

You have another cold. This one’s a real one, too! You are full of mucus, so much so that you panic when you go to bed as you can’t breathe normally. Two nights ago, you were up until midnight (way past your bedtime missy!) when I finally jumped into my car and drove to the drugstore to buy you some saline solution and a humidifier (at an extortionate price!) for your room with the hopes it would help you with your nasal congestion. I came back home to find both you and your Dad fast asleep in your respective beds and I decided to do the same instead of risking waking you up with installing the humidifier. The last time I looked at the clock it said 0200 and then you were up at 0500 for a good hour until you settled and slept in until 0915.

You managed to have an ok day yesterday, despite being all stuffed up, you flashed us your toothy grin, but we could tell just by looking at your red-rimmed eyes that you were not up to 100%. You did, however, manage to really start “furniture walking” and even gained some speed doing it! Because of my short night, I skipped my yoga class today, but I fully plan on going today with your Dad’s full consent that I do need some “me” time. It will be good to be back at it after a month of not going (due to travelling and all).

Last night, you stayed up a bit later than usual (your usual bedtime is around 1900 and you were up until 2100 last night) and you’ve had a pretty good night. I could hear you whimper in your bed from time to time, but you always settled back into sleep on your own.

We also met with you Nanny last night to discuss her schedule to take care of you when I go back to work. She has her schedule for the month of December and we’ve discussed her wages and our expectations of her and everything is in place for her to start looking after you on December 1st. Exactly 31 days from now. Ugh! As much as I love my job and I know you need to interact with other people, I think my heart will break a little  on that morning, as I leave you for 12hrs+ to re-enter the working field. I am, however, confident that your Nanny will do a wonderful job taking care of you and she even has agreed to speak French to you, which I wasn’t expecting, but am ecstatic about!

Be good to your Dad while I go to yoga and I will see you shortly my little angel!

Love,
Mom & Dad Xxo

Hurricane Rina

Sweet Rina,

Funny enough, although your name is not a mainstream one, there is a hurricane developing off the Caribbean coast of Mexico and its name is Rina. Spelled exactly like your name. Although the hurricane is developing far from where we live and won’t affect us in any way, I sometimes feel like it is living in our living room! You are crawling into everything, throwing your toys around, making sure  to spread everything and pull on everything!

Yesterday, I was trying to work a quick yoga DVD while you were playing next to me and, although it wasn’t the best yoga practice, it was one of the funniest I’ve done! You were crawling all over my mat, crawling between my legs while I was doing Utthita Trikonasana, standing right under my face while I was trying to do yoga push-ups! It was quite funny and even if I didn’t pay complete attention to my poses, I quite enjoyed having you rolling around with me on the mat. Hopefully, you’ll become a little yogi and learn to enjoy the stretches with me!

Love,
Mom & Dad Xxo

Sometimes, the hardest part is actually the easiest

Sweet Monkey!,

Since your Dad was away yesterday morning and it was a very sunny crisp fall day, we got an early start to it (6am, thanks to you!!!) and I was ready (and willing) to go for a short hike with you by 10am. I decided to take us up Mt. Doug. It had been a while since we had been hiking and I wanted something a bit more challenging than Christmas Hill. Up we went to the summit. I was huffing and puffing and as we crossed many other hikers, we also received a lot of encouraging words. I guess people thought (accurately) that going up with a baby on my back was a good workout.

Lovely view of the pumpkin patches

Misty morning atop Mt. Doug

You look tired, but you didn't sleep

I thought for sure that I would get  a more challenging workout going up than down, but I had forgotten about the little pitch just before the summit. It is quite steep and sandy. Add to it that it had rained for 2 days previous to our hike and the trail was covered with wet leaves. I took my time going back down as I didn’t want to slip on a leaf atop a rock.

We came back home and reunited with your Dad later on. It was nice to finally all be together after almost 3 weeks of being apart. As for today, it was crazy busy: I cleaned the bathroom, did 4 loads of laundry (including beddings, which I dislike with a passion!), took care of reinstating my nursing license (for my return to work in just over a month 😦 ), did some cooking,  a 2hr walk/errand run where I put you in your stroller and we walked to the Salvation Army to give away books, get some grocery and walk all the way back to Walmart for some supplies I needed. Through it all, you only napped for about 1hr. I was hoping you would nap this afternoon, but no such luck. You were pooped by bedtime though and went down easily. I am also very tired, but really wanted to get back in the habit of my yoga practice at home so I did a 30mins Yoga Tune-Up DVD and am now relaxing on the couch. Tomorrow will be another busy day, but I’m hoping we’ll be able to go outside at some point in the afternoon.

Sleep well my gorgeous girl!

Love

Mom & Dad Xxo

Feeling sick, grinding teeth and home sweet home

Sweet Rina,

Yesterday, we managed a very small hike (probably around 7.5km) and although it was the easiest of all the hikes we have done in a long while, to me, it was the worst. We wanted to go on the Forbidden Plateau of Strathcona Park  and go from Paradise Meadows Trailhead to Lake Helen McKenzie. From there, we wanted to go to Kooso Lake and maybe attempt to go to Lady Lake and then come back around Battleship Lake. Our plans were cut short because of me. As we got to Lake Helen McKenzie, I started having pretty bad abdominal cramps. We then went around the lake up to the campground on the other side of the lake and I was not feeling any better, getting nauseous. We decided not to go to Kooso Lake and go back to the parking lot through the Battleship Lake Loop and thank goodness we did so. I pretty much spent the rest of the hike dry-heaving my way back to the car. Not a fun walk at all, for me anyway! You, on the other hand, were all smile or sleeping 😉

All smiles while Daddy ties his boots

I’m really sad that I wasn’t feeling well as the day turned out to be gorgeous (we had started the walk under a cloudy sky) and the views were really nice. Oh well, I guess we’ll have to save it for another hiking trip! When you are a bit bigger, we would like to make our way up to the icefield (we would need to camp overnight to do so, though).

First glance of Lake Helen McKenzie. I love the effect of the reflection in the water!

Mt Washington in the background, from Battleship Lake

A close-up of Mt Washington, still from Battleship Lake

After we got to the car, the dry-heaving let off a little and I only had to deal with the cramps. We went into town in Courtenay to run some errands and as I was feeling better, we also stopped to get lunch. That was a big mistake as I started getting nauseous as soon as we got back to the car. I ended up being sick once we came back to the B&B and felt better instantly afterwards. We took it easy for the rest of the day/evening and today, I was back to normal.

In other news, yesterday, you started grinding your teeth. I don’t know how you manage to do so as you only have 3 teeth that are fully out and one more on the way, but they are not aligned! You just twist your jaw and get grinding. It is quite maddening as it sounds like a low-pitched, nails-on-a-a-blackboard sound according to your Dad. Please don’t destroy your brand new pearly whites! Hopefully, this will pass once you grow more teeth!

We are now back home and although I am happy to be back home, I’m sad that our little vacation is over. I really did enjoy all the quality family time we spent over the past week and am not really looking forward to the madness of our everyday routine. Oh well, I have set up some goals for myself for the upcoming months (nutrition-wise, exercise-wise, yoga-wise and I also want to start training for the Run for the Cure coming up in October and I’d really like to be able to run it (if my shins allow me to do so, therefore, I need to start training THIS WEEK! Hopefully, you’ll be collaborating and be a good partner in your stroller!

Love,

Mom & Dad Xxo

Namaste

Sweet Rina,

This morning was my yoga class at the studio and I have to admit, I wasn’t really looking forward to it. I’ve been feeling a lot of tension in my neck and shoulders lately and for some weird reason, I felt like I was buzzing from the inside. However, since I did pay for class, I also have a sense of obligation to attending every single class and therefore, I took off and went to class!

Funny enough, it wasn’t my neck or shoulders that were bothering me (maybe thanks to your Dad’s massage last night?), but my psoas were just screaming while we did a modified Utthita Parsvakonasana at the wall. Same when we did a modified Parsvottanasana at the wall. I was supposed to feel a stretch in my iliacus, and instead, felt the stretch in my calves. Corrine, our teacher, said it was the beauty of yoga. A pose that will stretch you one way on a specific day, will end up stretching you a completely different way on another day, month, year, depending on your mood and body!

By the way, I have to talk a little bit more about Corrine ( you can read about the teacher’s bio here). She is a really good yoga teacher. She is intuitive, hands-on, very helpful with her verbal cues about adjusting yourself into a pose and funny too with her teaching. She is a wonderful yogi and very graceful too. I look up to her and aspire to, one day, be as graceful and beautiful in my poses as she is. There. Enough on my yoga crush!

Suffice to say that after today’s practice, I felt light and limber and relaxed, no more inside buzz, like I usually do after a yoga class. I’m really happy I’ve registered for the general class being taught by Corrine for next term. Hopefully, I’ll be able to improve and pursue a deeper practice.

Now, if you could just wake up from your nap so we could walk to the grocery store and get some food for dinner tonight. You seem to be growing again as you are back to napping 3x/day. Lucky girl! I wish I could do the same!

Love,

Mom & Dad Xxo