Ever since Geri Halliwell said her post-Spice Girls bod was down to yoga and was pictured doing a headstand on a beach whilst George Michael watched on. I have been obsessed with yoga. Full disclosure, not obsessed enough to go every week, but enough to buy a yoga mat from the middle of Lidl and place my hands on my heart chakra and give it my best "namaste".
I've always wanted to be one of these people that get up early on holiday to do yoga at sunrise on the beach and then swish into breakfast with a post yoga glow, my mat under my arm so that everyone knows I'm one of those women that gets up early on holiday to do yoga. There's no point unless everyone else in the hotel secretly hates you. I'm one of those women that stays up later than normal on holiday, drinks red wine and can be convinced that singing karaoke is a good idea.
Over the years I have done actual yoga, pilates, yogalates, a mixture of yoga and pilates, that was so tough it even made my contact lenses sweat and my latest thing is Yin Yoga.
Yin Yoga is a slower paced form of yoga, which according to the t'interweb incorporates principles of traditional Chinese medicine with asanas (postures) that are held for slightly longer periods of time, sometimes 5 minutes or more.
In layman's terms, it involves laying on the floor a lot, a lot of stretching, but far less of the poses that make you want to fart and there's a strong 20 minute finish of meditation where the teacher reads some sort of poem or passage. The whole thing is set to plinky plonky spa music and at the end, hands to your heart chakra, a namaste and an off you pop in love and peace.
I do genuinely love yin yoga, mainly because as someone who is on the larger side of fabulous, I can actually get into most of the poses and they actually look like they should. The only ones I can't do is anything that involves sitting back on my knees, which fortunately there's very few of. This is more to do with crappy knees than size.
When you're on the larger side of fabulous going to an exercise class can be intimidating. You shrink away at the back so no one can see you and feel slightly embarrassed that you're sweating 10 times more than anyone else. I once heard someone at the gym say they felt sorry for someone my size. I had to resist the urge to drop kick them and point out that I was at the gym clearly trying to do something about it and they could ram their opinion in their Stanley cup and then up their perfectly 100-squats a day ass!
There's a woman in the Zumba class I do that always has perfectly coiffured hair that sits in a perfect bob. Her one concession to the fact she's at the gym is a headband that matches her leggings. I like to think she makes them both on her super sewing machine. At the end of the class she has barely broken a sweat and neither her hair nor her headband have moved.
I however limp out of Zumba looking like I've spent 6 months crawling through the jungle on my hands and knees in blistering heat fighting off deranged baboons.
One of the reasons I like yin yoga is the fact for most of the class your eyes are closed and you can't really see what anyone else is doing, you look what the teacher is doing and then you flop back down on your mat.
The poses are mainly about stretching, so after I've spent the day in the office, the opportunity to give me back, hips and shoulders a good old stretch works for me.
I love the names of yoga poses too, butterfly, dragon, frog, seal and swan. Every time we do the cat pose, I think my cat's favourite pose isn't stretching out her back, but waiting until we have visitors, sticking a leg in the air and licking her bum. I can totally understand why the yogi master decided to go with the back stretching cat option instead.
My favourite named pose though is "Bananasana" mainly because with every fibre of my being I have to stop myself singing "Robert De Niro's Waiting"or indeed any other of Banarama's greatest hits. Plus you get to pretend you're a banana and that's never not fun.
Controversially I do not see what is relaxing about child's pose, we did it last night. As the teacher said, "just relax back into child's pose and take a minute to reset and relax the muscles." A wave of panic went over me that there was every chance I would a suffocate in my own bosoms and as everyone else transitioned into sphinx, it would become apparent that I was lost forever in my own cleavage.
I'm pretty certain whoever developed yoga did not have big boobs.
I always sleep well after yin yoga, which after last week's blog made a nice change from trying to nod off to various soundscapes.
I'm pretty sure I'll do yin yoga for the next few weeks and then get bored of it until I see a picture of Geri Halliwell doing a headstand on the beach and then I'll want to dig my yoga mat out of the cupboard again!
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