Day #5

Home Practice - Bikram #95
Thursday

Home Practice - Baptiste (45 min) #96
Friday

Yes. Five days under my belt. One more Bikram home practice tomorrow and then I will venture back into the studio on Sunday. I am excited to get back into the swing of things.

The soreness is going away. I gave my body this week to sort of get used to the 45 min Baptiste workout. Next week I want to do the 60 min Baptiste workout at least 2x and the 45 min only once.

I do already feel a bit skinnier, but I am refraining from weighing myself until Sunday. I feel so much better both physically and mentally now that I am getting into a daily exercise habit again. And I realize that I have a tendency to be a little bit obsessed with the scale. So during the 14 week challenge I'm gonna try my best to weigh in once a week instead of daily.

Today I happened upon an old blog post from Bliss Chick about how she got rid of her migraines. (You can check her blog in my blog roll if you're interested.) For me, I think it's been almost a year since I had my last migraine. And it's also been a whole year since I gave up diet soda.

In her blog post BC talks about triggers and mentions dairy as a big one. Reading her words it was almost like something clicked in my head. When we consume most commercially available milk, cheese, etc. we are ingesting a BOATLOAD of antibiotics and synthetic hormones. How could this intake over years and years NOT screw with our bodies delicate hormonal balance and upset the natural intestinal flora of beneficial organisms?

So, drumroll please... Beginning tomorrow, 6/6/09, I am hereby giving up dairy for an entire year. I may add some organic and raw products back into my diet at a future date. But not until I've gone cold turkey from all milk and cheese for a full year. You reading here are my witnesses.

It's going to be hard. But that's what I thought about giving up diet drinks and it really wasn't too difficult once I made up my mind to do it. This is my health we're talking about. And that is of the utmost importance.

Day #1

Home Practice - Baptiste (45 min) #92

So today I began my own yoga challenge. I am going to do yoga every day consecutively for 101 days(!!!) However, I have decided that I will not be doing the Bikram sequence at the studio every single day.

I want to experiment w/ a couple of Baron Baptiste videos that come highly recommended by an old roommate of mine. One is a 45 minute beginner's Ashtanga practice and the other is a 70 minute Vinyasa flow sequence. I am hoping that this "yoga cross training" will keep my muscles guessing and get me into better shape faster than just doing Bikram alone. Not to mention trying these other styles will help make me into a more well rounded yogini in the long run.

Don't get me wrong - I LOVE Bikram. It will still be my foundation and I will go to the studio 4 days per week religiously. But I really feel like I want to expand my horizons a bit. So I will do one of the Baptiste videos at least 2x per week. And then the last weekly practice will be my choice - either the Bikram audio cd at home or one of the Baptiste videos. Who knows? Maybe at the end of this I will return to doing strictly Bikram or maybe I will like the variety of practicing different styles. Never know until you try.

In addition, I have been invited by Penni Shelton to join her "Big Fat Raw Experiment". For the next 14 weeks, or the duration of my yoga challenge, I will be trying my best to eat a high raw vegan diet and tracking my progress for the world to see. Check out my "Raw Mana" blog if you're interested in the details.

This is sort of active research for a book she's writing. So I am very excited to see what kind of effect the combo yoga and eating a much cleaner, higher water content diet will have on my body. The two seem like perfect compliments to each other.

My ankle tattoo is still healing. I had no problem doing the Baptiste video at home tonight but I'm a little worried about the heat. I'm gonna have to see how it feels tomorrow before I decide if I'm quite ready to get back into the studio yet. If worse comes to worse I'll just do a couple extra Bikram workouts at home this week. They say everyone heals differently and it takes as long as it takes. I really love it and promise to post pictures once it isn't all crusty looking. ;))



Anyway thanks for reading & sorry for the extended absence. I assure you that I'm back with a vengeance!!