Monday Workout: Four!

I love my three-round workouts, but sometimes we need to mix things up a bit.  This week, we have four rounds.  They’re shorter rounds, but just as much work!  For the minute of cardio, choose anything you like.  In the studio, we usually use the Xiser, but a jump rope or bike or just plain running around works fine.

1 min cardio
Bosu squats	20
Arnold press	10
mountain climbers	20
deadlifts	20
burpees	10
pretty princesses	10

Friday Book Report: Inside the Yoga Sutras

I began a 200-hour yoga teacher training course about a year and a half ago, but did not complete it because I got to have a hysterectomy instead.  I did get to keep the books, and the extra books I got because I am that kind of student.  I am working my way through those books.  Inside the Yoga Sutras by Reverend Jaganath Carrera is one of them.

It was a slog.

I understand that translation is difficult and I’ve been told that translating Sanskrit is particularly complex due to the way words interact with each other to change meaning.  Maybe so, but isn’t the job of the translator to make something more or less intelligible to the reader?  Especially if there is plenty of room for commentary, and the commentary is actually what the book is for?

I am sure I am hampered in my understanding by the unfortunate fact that I’m a white chick raised in a different spiritual tradition.  I don’t mean to imply that there is not something in the sutras worth finding; just that I’m not finding it in this particular commentary/translation.  It may be that I’m not ready to hear what this version has to say and I need the easy reader version for now.

It’ll be on the studio shelf if anyone wants to borrow it.

Ritual but no sacrifice

Almost all of the Pilates sessions I do start with the same few exercises.  Partly this is because I want to make sure that there is some warm-up before we get down to more challenging work and because there are some basics I want to make sure we do on a regular basis.  But a deeper reason is about plugging in to the session.

Clients don’t always exactly arrive when they walk through the studio door.  They’re full of traffic or work or grocery lists or that phone call from their auntie.  They have to get their shoes off and deal with jackets and water bottles and all the usual paraphernalia.  I check in about how their bodies are doing as we do the first few moves.  We take a minute or two to move with the breath.  And by the third or fourth movement, they’re really with me, in part because we do the same routine at every arrival.  We have set it up as a sign for the body to tune in to the mind’s channel and vice versa.

Similarly, almost every session ends with a standing extension, arms up to the sky like the Olympic salute.  Extension is about inhalation and tends to raise the energy level.  It makes people feel good.  We go out on a high.

Little rituals can make a big difference.