Answering the eternal question - "You don't work? What do you DO all day?"

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Yay for yoga!

I haven't taken a yoga class in years, but I really enjoyed it when I was doing it, so I thought "why not?" and drove my happy to be out of the house self down to School House Yoga in the Strip (which I apparently ran past on Sunday in the Pittsburgh Half Marathon) to partake of the Tuesday night ashtanga class.  Back in the day when Madonna was doing ashtanga and everyone was trying to get those fabulous cut arms, you could find an ashtanga class at every yoga studio within spitting distance.  But now it seems like my preferred yoga class is not so easy to find, meaning School House has cornered the market.  It also helps that they're so close to me.  This was an intermediate class that I took, but I figured that since I'd done ashtanga in the past, I'd probably be ok.  

I gotta say, this was probably the fittest yoga class I've ever taken.  There were at least three of us who had run the half on Sunday, and I was probably the chubbiest person in the room (and I'm not all that chubby anymore).  The girl facing me had some pretty spectacular technique, I was kind of mesmerized watching her get into these positions that I'd never seen before (we never actually got through the whole primary series in any of my classes before, so maybe I was a *little* underprepared for the class).  Actually, pretty much everyone in the class was pretty impressive, which was cool to see.  And I think I did pretty good for having been out of yoga for so long.  All that pilates and all the running has definitely made me a lot stronger than I was the last time I was doing yoga, so I was able to do some poses that I'd never been able to do before - bakasana (crow pose, I think) and headstand.  Well, I did headstand for maybe 45 seconds, before I fell over and made a resounding thud that probably scared the crap out of the other people in the class, but that's the best I've ever done before, so I'll count it as a success.  My arms are going to be killing me tomorrow, though, I'm sure, since we did the primary series the *real* way, vinyasas and all.  Good thing I don't have anything to do tomorrow!

In knitting news, I'm almost done with my Owlet sweater, one of which I've donated to Oliver's preschool's fundraiser.  I'm not quite sure how to price it, I'm thinking $60.00 for a handmade child's sweater, and they can start the bidding at $30.00 then (it's a silent auction).  I've got about 50 things I want to make, but I always end up on the computer in front of the tv.  I think if I had like four more arms I could get so much more done.