When I was very young, I used to watch my mother doing yoga in the living room along with Lilias, courtesy of PBS. I’ve got friends and net-friends who practice, and a yoga center just opened in the local shopping center I like to visit, but I’m not ready for a formal class yet.

I was pretty excited, therefore, when I got the chance to review a yoga dvd. It’s the “Gentle Practice” disc from RealBodyWork.com, and I’ve just finished my first half-hour session. I had to wait til I could breathe without coughing before I could try it.

Tonight, as a gentle rain fell beyond the window, I dimmed the lights and popped in the disc.

I was greeted by the teacher, a woman named Zyrka, whose manner and appearance reminded me very strongly of Donna Murphy’s character in Star Trek: Insurrection – very centered and serene, and with a sense of stillness that was extremely comfortable. Some exercise DVDs are intimidating; this one is not. From the moment Zyrka appeared on my screen, I was on board. She spends several minutes explaining how to dress (comfortable, movable, layers), and what equipment you need (a mat and yoga block are fine, but all you really need is a carpeted floor and a blanket). She stresses that you shouldn’t drink water (unless you’re pregnant) during the session, but MUST hydrate before and after, and she also goes through information like not to do inversion exercises if you have high blood pressure or during your period.

As I’ve been sick for a couple weeks, and, as posted earlier, am pretty tired today, and because I’ve never done yoga before, I chose to try the easiest shortest practice session, a 33 minute gentle workout for beginners. I’m a little too stiff in the knees for a couple of the poses, but I didn’t feel like I was straining. In fact, I feel pleasantly warm, and calm, but not tired, twenty minutes after completion.

Before actually doing a session I explored the DVD. There are six practice sessions available, a beginning series of roughly half, three-quarters, and a whole hour each, and a more challenging series of roughly the same lengths of time. The first one is mainly sitting poses.

There is also a pose guide, where you can work through the different poses at your own pace, to get a feel for how they should, well, feel. I explored that feature a little bit, and will look at it again before I do another session.

I’m really excited by this disc, and I think I’ll be adding a Sunday session to my week from now on. It just seems like the perfect calming/centering/stretching thing to cap a weekend and transition back into Monday.

I should add, that while I’m open to experiencing different spiritual traditions, some people are not. There is nothing of mysticism in this DVD. It’s all just being in tune with your body and breath.

Of course, now I’m hyper-conscious of my breathing, but that will pass.

The company that produces this yoga dvd, RealBodyWork, also makes a Tai Chi disc. I’m curious to see what that’s like.

Everyone:
Please go to:
http://www.arcanetwilight.com/stories/kinche_talon_0301.html
and read this story by my friend Erin (carynsilver @ LJ).

And then visit her livejournal, and tell her how much she rocks.

We began the morning by bringing Miss Cleo to the vet. While bringing Zorro to the vet is often sad, because he’s so sick, bringing Miss Cleo to the vet is always mortifying because she thinks vets and vet techs are tasty treats meant just for her.

But she was due for her heartworm test and kennel cough shot, and she’s got a couple of cysts we needed to have a vet look at, and she’s a month away from turning eight which means she’s a senior dog.

Even if SHE still thinks she’s a puppy.

Our vets are pretty flexible, really. They left us in the exam room and took her into the back, muzzled her long enough to deal with the needles, and let her out of the muzzle as soon as she was calm (ish), and when I apologized for her behavior they assured us it’s all part of the job.

Still.

We’ve gone through obedience training, agility classes, and she’s even managed to earn her CGC certificate and whatever we do, she freaks at the vet, and it doesn’t make sense because we’ve had her since she was eight weeks old and no vet has ever harmed her.

In any case, the cycts are benign lipomas, and she’s otherwise healthy, we just need to put her on senior food (do they make senior dog food in small bites?) and make sure she exercises.

Zorro is not on senior food because he is rapidly running out of teeth, and can’t manage crunchies. The rolled food we feed him at least makes him chew a little.

And canned stuff is just gross.

We had both of them on a BARF diet for the longest time, but Zorro can’t really do bones any more, and I was tired of dealing with raw meat.

Still, whenever there are bunnies on the lawn, Miss Cleo watches them with a predatory gleam in her eye, and growls under her breath, and I know she’s thinking “Mom, lunch is getting away.”

Today was not quite her worst vet visit ever, but she did manage to freak out enough that her eyes bled. So now we have ointment for that. Because drugging one of our animals every day isn’t enough.

At least the vet trip tired her out.
Which is good, because *I’m* too tired for walkies.

Do you ever feel like you’re so out of sync that what you’re doing completely doesn’t match up with the imaginary closed captioning says you’re doing. Or saying?

I’ve felt like that for the past two weeks, and while most of that is due to flu and assorted medications which eased the symptoms of flu, I need to take some drastic measures to find ME again.

Today I woke up energizes and smiling, and I greeted the sun with fond wishes.
I had a lovely chat with my mother on the phone, and a lovely online chat with a friend who is embracing her own positive changes.

Then I made a banana and peach smoothie, and drank it while doing the little bit of work that needed to be done today.

I took both dogs out for walkies in the crisp sunshine, even Zorro who still has a cough. I let him set the pace, and he was fine, and didn’t cough at all til we were back at home. (I now wonder how much of his coughing is real and how much is a pathetic plea for attention.)

I came home and had a lovely chat with AT&T nee Cingular, about condensing my plan, and they saved me $30 instantly, and in May I can drop the second line, and upgrade to the Blackjack II (in RED), and then in July I can cancel or downgrade the data card plan.

I ate leftover Pad Thai for lunch with a bottle of cool water, and then went upstairs and did a dance warmup (isolations and stretches) and lifted weights (just one set of each, at thirty pounds, because my chest is still congested, and after two weeks of doing nothing that was enough to make me sweat.)

I did a bunch of crunches and more stretching and am drinking another bottle of water.

And tonight we’re going to the bookstore where I am buying the Martha’s Vinyard Detox book and on Sunday I will begin a 21 day juice-and-pureed veggies detox fast, because I feel like I’m laden with chemicals, and it’s not good.

Chemicals on hair, okay. Chemicals in body, not okay.

On the 15th we are bleaching my hair all the way out and dying it entirely Atomic Pink with nothing to ground it, and I may cut it as well.

I am very excited.

And energized.

And change is good.

Appetizer
If you could be any current celebrity for one whole week, who would you want to be?

Michelle Pfeiffer or Jodie Foster.

Soup
On a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being highest), how much do you enjoy talking on the phone?

10 if it’s a friend or family. 1 if it’s a telemarketer.

Salad
Name a charitable organization to which you have donated (or would like to).
I’m a big supporter of Habitat for Humanity.

Main Course
What is a food you like so much you could eat it every single day for a month?

Sushi. I could totally live on it. Or Pad Thai if I wanted something warm.

Dessert
Have you or anyone in your family had the flu this year?

My husband and I both just got over a particularly nasty strain. It’s been nearly two weeks, and today is the first day I feel really WELL.

Friends,

As some of you know, some friends and I have spent the last few months blogging Project Runway over at Electric Tangerine. Now that the PR season is over, it’s time for the new season of TC – Top Chef – so we’re flipping the site over to blog our other favorite Bravo obsession.

If you’re a foodie, or want to be, or just a fan of the show, you’re invited to join the fun and the snark.

New prompts have been posted at Cafe Writing. Have at it.

CenterFire at LiveJournal gets the credit for introducing me to this, and even though my only knowledge of WoW comes from friends who play, I still found it hilarious:

To compare, the original Ma Na Ma Na is also offered. Because sometimes the classics are good, too.

I don’t know yet if there will be any Mustang events at the auto show in Fort Worth next weekend, but I do know that muscle cars are now on my horizon when they never were before because of the job I’ve been doing for the last year, but also because my cousin S. is talking about having NASCAR fantasies again.

I have to confess, I’ve never been able to sit through more than a lap or two of any auto race, but when we lived in Colorado when I was a kid, I did enjoy my one visit to the auto rallies on the ice of the Georgetown reservoir. My impressions of the day are choppy: cold weather, revving engines, cars that looked impossibly fast and impossibly flimsy, at once. I suppose there was also beer, but as a seven-year-old that wouldn’t have caught my attention.

Still, I smile at the memory I do have. And when I see old muscle cars for sale, like the mustang I wrote about several weeks ago, that was a tempting buy, if completely impractical, I get kind of wistful, and wonder if maybe I’m channeling S. Because I don’t like cars. No really, I don’t.

At any rate, Fuzzy and I are going to the auto show. I suspect he’s only agreeing because it will mean yet another weekend in which he will not have to paint the kitchen, and because I told him that the Humane Society will be there. “Cute puppies and cool cars,” I IM’d him, in my pitch. I have a hair appointment that Saturday, so I guess we’ll go on Sunday. The last day of the show. Oh well. It’ll still be fun.