A good day for yoga daydreaming...

It's a warm summer day here in Bavaria - a perfect day for daydreaming and doing yoga (or perhaps a little bit of both). Around the time we moved to Germany last year and I became a full-time mom, I started using yoga to release the stress that comes with daily life and help me feel a bit more grounded in heart and mind. I try to practice daily, although some weeks are definitely better than others. With a mere 20 minutes a day I find I am able to moderate my sanity.

Doing yoga with some regularity has also greatly benefited my practice. I'm much stronger now and less afraid to try challenging poses. I have a better understanding of what I'm capable of and how to make the poses really work for me so I'm enjoying my practice instead of focusing on how tired my body is staying in one pose for too long.

After I attended a few yoga workshops with my friend, K, back in May, I started trying to take my yoga practice to a new level. During those workshops I managed to get into yoga poses I never in a million years thought I'd ever be able to do. It was motivating and invigorating for my yoga practice.

I owe the Internet for allowing me to do yoga nearly every day. Although I'm still a regular user of yogadownload, I also became a member of My Yoga Online (another one of K's influences), where I can choose a class from the site's vast database for any length of time at pretty much any level and stream it directly to my iPad from the internet. Several weeks ago, the yoga class that K teaches at the gym on post had to be cancelled, so we made arrangements to do a fun advanced class together from My Yoga Online. The class was so incredibly challenging, and it was fun to try the advanced moves with a friend. It was somehow more fun to laugh at myself with company.

I was completely taken aback at some of the poses I was able to do (and equally as complacent with those crazy poses I knew would take some serious time). At one point I went from crow pose, into headstand, and then back into crow. Crazy! Obviously you need to be strong enough to do these poses, but what I'm realizing is that you mostly just need to be willing to try them. I remember taking yoga classes and practically ignoring my instructor when she would say, "just see what you can do and try to get into the pose." The poses seemed far too difficult and I always accepted that I was anything but flexible. Denial was easy, failure was not.

So, what am I dreaming about now that I have this newfound way of approaching my yoga practice? Eventually I would really like to get my yoga certification to start teaching, but right now I'm daydreaming about finding a yoga retreat to lose myself in and take my yoga to another level. It sounds so amazing to me to spend a week at a resort doing nothing but practicing yoga, meditating, and eating healthy food. Am I a weirdo that this sounds like heaven to me?

There is a beautiful retreat I recently came across set in Mexico just south of Cancun. The yoga at the retreat is being taught by Gina Caputo, who was one of the instructors I was introduced to at a yoga workshop in May. She was amazing, and I would do anything to be able to take a workshop from her again.

The retreat is called the Winter Solstice Yoga Retreat in Tulum, Mexico. You spend one full week at the beautiful Amasala Resort on the Mexican Riviera. How amazing would that be?! Mexico is not exactly a destination on our map right now, but I would love to find something like this nearby. Can you imagine spending a week on the ocean doing yoga twice a day with two amazing instructors that challenge you, like Gina Caputo, eating nothing but incredible food that is good for you, and relaxing? That is something worth daydreaming about... Ahhhhhhh...

What do you daydream about on beautiful summer days?





 

Posted with Blogsy