Sunday Letters

Uncategorized, Yoga

Yoga Adjustments and Exercises for Office Workers

heather

Good morning and Happy Mother’s Day!  I’m sitting at my parents’ kitchen table, listening to their gargantuan fridge make creepy noises, looking out over their grassy lawn, past the farm across the road, and skimming over the undulating fields speckled with farm houses and tree, topped by a blue, lavender, and white sky  It’s a pretty site to see in the morning – better than the row of houses and garages that I see from our house in the morning.  It’s very convenient living in the center of town, but I miss the quiet and the views of the country.  Maybe Tim and I can start following the www.mrmoneymustache.com way of life (save 40%+ of our income) and retire to a cute little country house somewhere before we are 65.  With a massive garden and a solid internet connection, we’d be all set.

Anyway, I digress. I really meant to talk about 2 things this morning. 1.  My experience assisting one of my YTT friends with her Community class yesterday, and 2. Some final notes from Max’s day-long intensive.

My friend, Angela, taught her first Community class at Indigo yesterday, and I offered to be her second – someone to walk around and adjust people and to just generally help out.  As I was doing it, I realized that for me personally, just standing at the front of the class telling people how to do the asanas is easier than walking around and adjusting them!  Adjustments are so much more personal. I really hate conflict, and even though giving adjustments is a beneficial and helpful thing to do, to me it still feels a bit like you are telling the student they are doing something wrong.  CONFLICT.  It’s hard for me to do!  Also, I find that it’s hard to clearly communicate how you want the student to alter their behavior.  I think that comes primarily from talking quietly, so as to not disturb the whole class with the one-on-one instruction.  I am kind of whispering, and the student is kind of whispering, and neither one of us is really understanding each other.

After the class ended, one of the students asked me for some help with her downward dog.  Now THAT – just having one student who you could fully explain things to – was more my cup of tea.  So far, I do not like giving adjustments in a class setting, but I do like giving them one-one-one, where I can more clearly communicate with the student.

As with all things that make me uncomfortable, it was a good learning experience though. I am sure that the more times I do adjustments, the more comfortable I will feel with them.  We only have 3 YTT weekends left, and it sounds as if we are going to be doing A LOT of practice adjustments during that timeframe.  At first I was kind of disappointed because, honestly, giving adjustments is my least favorite part of the training.  I would rather be DOING yoga, learning about the philosophy, learning about anatomy, or learning about sequencing. But after Wednesday night, I realize that I really do need more experience in this area.

Hmm.  This is already kind of a long post. Let me just tie this up with a few more quick tidbits from Max’s class.  There are still a ton of points to cover, but I want to focus on the tips he gave us for office works, since that’s a pool of folks I’m interested in teaching.

If you have an office job, I’m sure you are already familiar with the effects on your neck, back, and shoulders of staring at a computer all day.  Everything gets tight and weak, and the whole front of your chest starts to collapse.  Max taught us a few asanas that are good for stretching and strengthening these areas.

  1. Cow face arms.  Here is a really good tutorial.  Max says to do this exercise for 60 seconds on each side twice.  If you work at an office, buy a strap and do this 3 times a day (while you are sitting in on yet another boring conference call, perhaps 🙂 ).  I need to talk to my fellow Wellness Team committee members at work about getting some of these straps for our employees!
  2. Reverse Tabletop.  The arms and shins should both be vertical – you may need to step your feet out farther than you think to get the correct alignment in this pose.  Point your fingers out to the side, then back towards the head, and finally towards the feet. Make sure knees don’t splay out or in.  If you have wrist issues, you can sit cross-legged and put your hands behind you, testing out the different hand positions.
  3. Downdog.  Max had some good suggestions for people (like me) who cannot get their heels to the mat.  Bring your feet wider (as wide as your mat, even), and elevate the hands using a stair step or a block.  Practicing this way will help you eventually get your heels to the floor.

And that’s it for today!  I hope you enjoy your Sunday!

Uncategorized

Random Yoga Teaching Tips

heather

It’s Friday!  I am so glad.  It’s been a trying week, being back in the real world after a weekend of chilling out in Blissland and then having Monday off.  I’m definitely ready for the weekend.

This morning I’m going to share a few quick tips that I learned in Max Strom’s Inner Axis day-long intensive.

  1. Breath work affects our minds more than the postures.
  2. The fastest way to improve your speaking skills is to record yourself.  Max records himself teaching a class 2 times a week. He uses a small recorder slipped into an arm band.  Then he actually listens to it and essentially takes his own class to see how it flows.  Do any of you do this?  If so, how do it?  What tools do you use?
    1. Take responsibility to say exactly what you mean.
    2. Don’t talk too softly or too quickly.
    3. Be careful about raising your voice at the end of a sentence.  This makes you sound as if you lack confidence.  This is something I need to work on, especially at work!
  3. Probably about 1/3 of our class attendees is sleep-deprived.  A lot of this is due to the blue light emitted from electronic devices.  The light makes our brains think the sun is still up, so the brain doesn’t secrete melatonin, and we can’t fall asleep and STAY asleep.  Help people by teaching a class that helps people sleep better.
    1. Here is a tip I’ve read from other sources – wear a pair of orange goggles at night.  The orange will block the blue light.  Tim and I both wear these when we look at our e-devices at night.  You look kind of nuts, but it helps you sleep!
  4. Teach from a universal platform.
    1. Be careful with religious decorations in the studio (no Buddha statues in the bathroom!).
    2. Be careful of mentions of specific Gods or religions.  You can have a very spiritual class without mentioning any specific religion.  Be inclusive so everyone feels comfortable.
    3. Teach all levels of a posture – easiest to more difficult. The most difficult postures should be taught one-on-one, not to the whole class.
  5. Adapt to your students – teach what they need.
  6. Teach the WHY.  Why breathe from the chest?  Why position your body in this certain way?  Why do yoga at all?  Inquiring minds want to know. 🙂

Research has shown that people can only easily remember 5-7 items, so I’m going to stop there.  Granted, I kind of cheated because I have sub-bullets in there, but I’m leaving them!

Hope you have a fabulous Friday and that you can get outside, get some sun, and that you can spend time with people you love today.

Books, Health & Fitness, Yoga

Teaching my first public class & a list of recommended reading

heather

Last night I taught my first public class through Indigo, the studio where I am doing Yoga Teacher Training.  When we first started YTT, I honestly could not imagine myself teaching. It seemed completely overwhelming and nerve-racking.  All those eyes, looking at you,waiting for you to tell them what to do, trusting you to make them feel better and not hurt them, watching, waiting…  It seemed so intimidating.

And then we did our first adjustments to our fellow students – how could I get comfortable touching people I don’t even know???  And then we taught our first Sun Salutation to 5 other classmates.  I couldn’t even remember how to do a Sun Saluation.  Mind. Blank.  Then we took turns teaching ONE asana at a time to a group of beginner students.  I think my first pose was side plank.  Super easy asana, but Shannon had to give me little cues to get me started.  All that is to say, it was hard to imagine myself standing up in front of 15 people teaching a sequence of several asanas.

But I did it.

And it was awesome.

The class went really well!  I followed the template that I posted yesterday.  Overall the sequence flowed fairly well. I left out a couple of asanas in the interests of time.  I had 3 friends who attended the class, and I’m going to follow up with them today to see what they thought of the pacing, the volume of my voice, the clarity of my instructions, and the difficulty (or easiness!) of the class.  Immediately after the class a few students said thank you and that they thought it was a good class.  Hopefully they really felt that way!

I’m so glad that I entered this YTT program. I have learned so much, and it’s helped me to see that I am capable of more than I thought.  I haven’t reach my peak yet at 38. ;P

I think I promised a list of recommended reading from the Dubuque Yoga Conference, so here is that list.  Man, I wish I had more time to read!!!

And that’s it for this morning!  Thank you for reading today. If you read any of these books, or check out any of these resources, let me know what you think.  Have a great day!

Health & Fitness, Yoga

Beginner’s Yoga Sequence

heather

I don’t have much time to write this morning.  I am teaching my first public yoga class tonight, and I need to practice my planned sequence! I practiced it yesterday morning, and it was about 15 minutes short. I added a few asanas last night, so I need to run through it and see if it works.  Here’s the sequence.

Beginner's yoga sequence with breath work
Beginner’s yoga sequence with breath work

Thoughts?  Questions?  Comments?  Concerns?  Well wishes?!  I will take whatever I can get!

That’s it for today.  Tomorrow I plan to list out all the book recommendations we received over the weekend.

Have a great day!!

 

Health & Fitness

Breathing away anxiety

heather

As I mentioned yesterday, I took twelve pages of notes during Max Strom’s Inner Axis class at the Dubuque Yoga Festival.  He shared a TON of great information, a lot of it centered around how to breath properly and how breathing properly can have a huge impact on a person’s state of mind.

To begin with, he shared some very alarming statistics.  He said that 1 in 4 American women and 1 in 5 American men takes anti-anxiety meds or anti-depressants.  He also said that suicide has overtaken car accidents as the #1 cause of injury death.  He didn’t provide us with these statistics to depress us. He provided them to show that we are safe to assume that at least 1/2 of our yoga classes are filled with people who are not sleeping, have anxiety, are depressed, or have lower back issues.  He advised us to take this into consideration when  designing a class. A good goal for a class is to incorporate asanas and practices (such as deep breathing) that will help students sleep better and that will reduce anxiety.

This approach really resonated with me. I think many people come to yoga with the hope of getting a better boot-tay.  And depending on what type of yoga class you attend, you probably will get a better body, but I want to teach the kind of class where the yoga butt is just a serendipitous side-effect of the class. I want to teach a class that teaches people how to decompress and get centered and calm the fuck down.  (Sorry for the language, Mom!)

Max taught us a different way of breathing – chest breathing, he calls it.  Place your hands on the sides of your lower ribs.  As you inhale, focus on expanding your chest in all directions.  As you do so, you will feel your stomach and core tighten.  Hold your breath for a few moments, then as you exhale, pull your belly button toward your spine.  Max says this way of breathing helps you physically and emotionally (it helps oxegenate the blood), and it also keeps your core engaged 100% of the time, so you always have its support while moving through asanas (which will help protect your lumbar).

Why do you have to put your hands on your ribs?  Max says that wherever you put your hands on the body, it will move!  This cues your body to move where you want it to or how you want it to.  I find it’s difficult to get my chest to expand without doing this. I think that eventually your muscle memory will get used to it, and you will no longer need to touch your ribs to get them to move the right way.

Let me give a disclaimer – I just learned this on Friday!  I bought A Life Worth Breathing at the festival and plan to read that as soon as I am done with How Yoga Works. As with all teaching, take what resonates with you and research what works and doesn’t work. I plan to incorporate this into my practice.  I teach my first Community Class on Wednesday, and I think I’m going to start with a couple of minutes of this kind of breathing.  We will see how it goes!

Well, that’s enough for this morning.   Thank you for reading!  Let me know if you’ve read either of Max’s books or if you’ve attended his workshops. What do you think?  What has worked well for you?

I hope you have a positive, happy day!

Health & Fitness

Dubuque Yoga Festival – The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

heather

Who am I kidding??  There was no bad OR ugly.  It was just good.  Great, even.  Amazing.  Awesome.  Just really, really bonkers good. Since I’m running out of adjectives, I will start from the beginning.

This was the inaugural year for the Dubuque Yoga Festival.  The organizers, Scott and Julia Theisen, are the owners of Body and Soul in Dubuque, IA.  They did an absolutely amazing job.  I mean, I’ve never been to a yoga festival before, so I can’t compare it to other yoga festivals, but I can compare it to other conferences and conventions I’ve attended.  The organizers did a great job of, well, organizing!  The rooms were clearly laid  out, the agenda was clear, the programming was fantastic, the lunches on Friday and Saturday were thoughtfully planned,  and the entertainment on Friday night was very fun and engaging.

I attended all 3 days of the festival.  On Friday I spent the day with Max Strom learning about “Inner Axis Essentials.”  I took TWELVE pages of notes on his class.  Friday night we went to the evening ceremony which consisted of a keynote address from Sadie Nardini, a yoga/dance/costume runway show that was super colorful, very beautiful, and perfectly done, and a group dance done by people who just oozed rhythm. They were mesmerizing to watch.  They cast on a spell on me to the point that I actually got up and danced some crazy line dance with the rest of the crowd.  I did not do it WELL, mind you, but I did it. 🙂  It was super fun.

I started Saturday by attending a Kundalini Yoga session at 5AM.  It begin with a 20 minute chant, followed by a 30 minute asana practice, and closed by several other chants. It was interesting to attend, but once was enough for me! Saturday I took a class from Sadie on creating your best yoga class ever.  Then I attended a class  on Raise Your Vibration (using Kundalini yoga) during which I shook out all my bad energy by dancing like I have not since I went to a rave in high school.  Saturday afternoon I took another Sadie class, Learning to Fly.  She helps you use physics to do inversions – bending the elbows and pushing the hands into the earth to push the body up into the air.  I was EXHAUSTED by the end of the two hours, but I had 2 or 3 moments of clarity where I felt the lift of flight.  I practiced her techniques a bit more this morning and was able to hold my crow for longer than I ever have before.  With more practice, I think I will eventually be able to float. 🙂

We closed out the day by attending a gong ceremony.  What is a gong ceremony, you may ask?  Well, let me tell you!  The attendees circled their mats around 4 or 5 humongous gongs and several crystal bowls.  After an introduction encouraging us to close our eyes and meditate on the sound, we laid back on our mats and were submerged in rolling waves of sound. You could feel the sounds crest and fall over you.  It was unlike anything I’ve experienced.  We were there for an hour, but I think 30 minutes would have been just right.  By the end of the hour, I was very uncomfortable from laying on the hard floor, so my mind kept wandering off the sounds.  However, if you ever get a chance to go to a gong ceremony, DO IT!!

By the time the ceremony was completed, we were utterly exhausted and hungry.  We went to a delicious Ukrainian restaurant, Europa Cafe.  After eating lots of delicious food, we retired to the hotel to watch Mean Girls.  Don’t judge!!

Sunday morning we got coffee and breakfast at a great spot, Jitters Cafe.  They only had breakfast paninis.  When I asked if they had gluten-free bread for the panini, they said, no, but they could add the panini fixings to a spring green salad for me.  Perfect!! It was so tasty.  After breakfast I went to a session on balancing chakras. WHOLE LEE COW.  She showed us how you can measure someone’s chakras by dangling a necklace with a heavy fob on the end over the chakra.  Depending how how it spins and what direction it spins, you can tell the state of that chakra.  I was watching the teacher’s arm very closely to see if she was moving the necklace and causing it to spin. It really didn’t look like it.  I want to try it.  I need to do more research on chakras and see what science there is behind it. Truthfully it kind of freaked me out – not in a way that I was scared of it, just in the way that I felt as if I was seeing magic. 🙂

After that session, I was supposed to go to Sadie’s Core Transformation class.  But I still felt rather wrecked from the Learning to Fly class. I thought that Max Strom was teaching a chest and shoulders class at the same time, so I decided to go to that instead.  Well, once he started talking, I realized that I was sitting in a workshop on forgiveness!  There was no yoga to be had!  I considered slipping out the back to go to Sadie’s class instead, but that seemed really rude.  Plus the room had a huge wall of windows overlooking the tree-lined bluffs along the Mississippi. It was a beautiful room, and a wise man with lots to teach was speaking. I better stay.  I am so glad I did!  The workshop helped me realize that I am holding on to some things that I did not realize.  I got shit to work on.  That is FO SHO.

The day closed at 12:30 with a ceremony that involved us all sitting in a big room holding hands, sending positive energy to the person next to us, and then sending love to the whole universe.  Yes, yes. I know it sounds hippy dippy.  But man, was it so nice to be around that kind of genuine positivity for 3 days.  Everyone was happy, smiling, helpful, and glad to be in that space and time.  I absolutely loved it.

I will write more about what I learned in the upcoming days.  This blog post is already getting too long.

Oh!  Shoot. I wanted to give some words of advice for others who may be attending their first yoga festival.  BRING SOMETHING TO SIT ON!!  Sitting cross-legged on your mat for 3 days gets to be very uncomfortable. Pack a meditation cushion or yoga block or something.   Also, bring snacks!  None were available around the festival.  And dress in layers.  The conference rooms were wicked cold.  Several attendees brought blankets with them, and they were smart to do so.  And socks.  For the love of God, bring socks.

Ok, now I’m really done.  How about you?  Have you ever been to a yoga festival? Is this what they are usually like?

Take care and talk to you soon!

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness

YTT – Observations

heather

To obtain our YTT 200 Hour certificates we have to practice teach for 10 hours, and we also have to observe other certified teachers for 10 hours.  I began my observation hours today by watching Shannon, one of the co-owners of Indigo, the studio at which I’m doing my YTT training.

I go to Shannon’s vinyasa class almost every Wednesday night and Saturday morning.  These classes are very energetic and challenging – exactly the kind of yoga on which I thrive.  However, during YTT Shannon talks often about his lunch-time class, and it sounded like a totally different ball game – a bit slower paced and not quite as intense. As a beginner teacher, I think I will feel most comfortable teaching a slower-paced, more beginners-type class, so I wanted to check this out.

I took today off since I had YTT this weekend – I needed a catch-up day.  So I went to the noon class at Indigo and watched Shannon. I learned so much!

1.  First of all, I was amazed by the capabilities of the crowd.  I would say that at least 50%-75% of the class was past 60 years-old, but Man!  They were a flexible, sociable, impressive bunch of yogis.  Several of them were way more bendy than me, and they had flawless form.

2.  The “feel yourself grown taller through the crown of the head” cue is amazing.  Whenever Shannon used it (in Mountain Pose or Vira I or II), I literally saw everyone grow an inch taller.  Take that, gravity!

3.  People are happy doing yoga.  Everyone seemed happy to be in that space, there with their friends, taking care of their bodies, doing something good for their flesh and spirit.

4.  It’s easier to see bad alignment when you are looking at a group of people versus just one person.  It provides comparison, which is very helpful.

5. I at least have *some* good instincts.  One woman looked as if her knee was bothering her. I wanted to give her a blanket for some extra padding, but I didn’t want to interfere with the class.  Eventually Shannon came over and gave her a blanket.  Validation!  I was right. 🙂

6. I wrote down all the asanas that Shannon used, and I’m going to borrow his sequence and use it as a template for some practice teaching.  The sequence I have been using is made up of poses I am very comfortable with – asanas that are pretty easy for me to explain. I’ve been shying away from using poses that are a bit more complicated. Borrowing Shannon’s sequence will help bust me out of that comfort zone.

So one hour down, 9 to go. I plan on observing at least 5 different teachers.  I think it will be really interesting to examine everyone’s styles.

Next Wednesday I start practice teaching a real class at Indigo – eeeeeeek!  Technically one of my co-YTTers will be the primary teacher, and I will be the assistant. It’s still nerve-wracking though!  I’m excited and super nervous.  I hope I don’t pass out. 🙂

Take care, have a most excellent evening. 🙂

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo, Uncategorized

An experiment with Sprinting

heather

Everywhere I turn, I see an article about the benefits of interval training.  Off and on I will do some sprint intervals, but I haven’t gotten very focused with it.  I’ll do maybe one interval session per month.  Well, my monthly interval session came due on Wednesday, so Tim and I and a friend headed out to the bike bath.

We walked about 10 minutes before our first sprint.  For the first sprint we ran all-out for 15 seconds.  We walked until we got our breath back and then repeated the 15 second sprints 5 more times.  I think we were back home within 30-40 minutes.

I did not warm up as I should, and with my first sprint, I felt a knot in the top of my quad.  But I powered through, which could have been really stupid. By the time I got home, it felt like a rock was lodged in my leg. I spent the rest of the evening rolling it out with the foam roller.

The next day I felt pretty good.  The day after that was PAINFUL.  My quads!  Oh my God, my quads!  So sore.  But day 3 hit, which was Saturday.  I was on fire!  Just look at all this stuff I did: 1 hr 15 minute vinyasa yoga class, made home-made beef bone broth, rendered 2 quarts of tallow, baked Chunky Monkey muffins, roasted root veggies, walked 3.5 miles while listening to the The One you Feed podcast, cleaned up all the leaves from the front yard, cut all the stalks from last year’s prairie grasses, cleaned out the herb bed, took a shower, tried to go shopping for clothes (the stores were annoyingly busy), stocked up on staples from Target, and then went out with Tim for supper at Brix (they have a pretty good gluten-free pizza crust).  Let me see….yep. I think that’s about everything.

So maybe it’s because it’s Spring, and it’s actually warm and sunny. Or maybe it’s because I was full of human growth hormone from the sprints on Wednesday! I need to monitor my energy levels on Day 3 next time we do sprints and see if the pattern repeats.

And there you have my sprint story. Riveting, eh??

Moving on to a little recipe review – I tried two new ones this week:

Gluten-Free Buffalo Chicken Meatballs –  These were pretty good, but we used Habanero Louisiana Hot Sauce.  As a result, they were literally insanely spicy.  They gave me a stomach ache the first night I ate them, and they gave Tim a stomach ache when he ate them for leftovers.  I want to try them again though, but use a much milder hot sauce.

Pork Chops with Apples – I have always loved pork chops and applesauce, so I had to try this recipe. I would say it turned out good, but it’s not as good as my favorite pork chop recipe.  Plus, this dish is just not that pretty!  It’s very beige. I won’t make this again.

The roasted root veggie recipe I linked to above is a definite keeper though. This makes a huge pan of roasted veggies which is great for easy leftovers. We sautéed some of the leftovers for breakfast yesterday and topped them with crispy over-easy eggs, then we had more leftovers for supper last night. I bloomed some spices (marjoram, coconut sugar, salt, sage, red pepper flakes, cloves) in olive oil and then added ground pork. Once the pork was browned, we mixed it with the leftovers. So tasty yet easy.  I’m going to have some of that for breakfast this morning. 🙂

Hope you had a good, healthy weekend and were able to get outside and enjoy the gorgeous weather. Tim and I made up for our insanely productive Saturday by having a very relaxing Sunday.  We did a little 12 mile bike ride, had a couple of drinks, and then sat outside by a fire for a few hours.  It was perfect.

Health & Fitness

Breaking my teaching cherry

heather

I did it. I finally kinda sorta taught someone yoga.  My friend Marta was gracious enough to let me come over this morning and “teach” her some yoga. I say “teach” in quotation marks, because it was more of a conversation than teaching, but I’m still counting it!

Since it was just the two of us, I was super informal. I started out by teaching her about ujjayi breathing, which is a fundamental part of vinyasa yoga. Despite it being an integral part of the practice, Marta had never learned it before in any of her yoga classes!  We then moved on to a very simple, basic practice – cat/cow tilts, sun salutations, vira I and vira II, lots of planks, chaturanga, spinxes, etc. We did some bridges, twists, inversions, and then corpse pose.  During savasana, I gave her a little neck and face massage, and then I did this relaxation technique that one of our YTT trainers taught us.  While the student is laying on the floor, you pick up their legs and slowly swing them side to side (in a figure 8) as you lower them back to the ground.  It feels amazing.

So, how did it go?  Here are my observations.

1.  It’s really hard to remember right and left!!  I don’t know if I will ever be able to mirror, meaning if I’m facing a class, I will be moving the right side of my body, but I’ll need to instruct the students to move the left side of their body. How can something so simple be so confusing??

2.  It’s much harder than I anticipated to demonstrate yoga whilst also explaining to the student what they should be doing. It was easy for me to get out of breath.

3.  It’s a good idea to initially practice with someone who is as patient and easy-going as Marta! I lost my place a few times and stopped and sat down to explain things, and she was totally fine with that.

4. Despite doing quite a bit of yoga and reading a TON about yoga, when you are trying to explain to someone else HOW to do it, a lot of the information flies right out of your head.  I think I’m going to update my class notes with a couple of key cues to use for each pose.

5. I thought the sequence that I wrote up would last about an hour, but boy was I wrong! It was about 1/2 that, and that was with us chatting a bit during the flow.  I need to think about how long to stay in each pose. I think I moved us through them too quickly. My struggle is, it’s hard to keep track of how many breaths we stay in a pose because I’m talking during them!

Overall, I really enjoyed sharing what I’ve learned with Marta.  She said she enjoyed it too because in all the classes she’s taken, no one has really shown her individually how to do the pose or explained to her the proper alignment.  I think that’s just a byproduct of going to classes with lots of other people. Even in classes labeled for beginners,  teachers don’t spend a lot of time explaining things.  It DOES disrupt the flow, but I think that for people just starting out with yoga, it would be really helpful to get the mechanics down before doing a truly flowing sequence.

It was a good experience.  I need more practice though.  For our YTT program, we have to do 10 hours of community teaching. But I want to do more one-on-one teaching with my friends and family before I go out and teach strangers!  Also, teaching Marta helped me realize that I really need to study anatomy more. I know the basic muscle groups, but it would be nice to look at a person and understand what the muscles and bones are doing beneath the surface.  So much to learn!

 

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness

Final Chili of the Season

heather

It’s March. It should be warmish and sunny. Instead it’s been cold and cloudy.  We actually had snow on Monday.  Ridiculous.  To counteract the dreariness of this month, I tried out a new recipe:  Paleo Crockpot Chili.  It’s AMAZING!!  I think this is one of my favorite crockpot recipes ever.  The chili is super thick and very spicy.  I didn’t have any tomato paste or stewed tomatoes, so I used 3 14 ounce cans of diced tomatoes.  Also instead of a fresh jalapeño, I used the jalapeño slices that Tim fermented last summer. Muy bueno. Make this chili post haste.

I also tried another new recipe this week:  Almost 5 Ingredient Pizza Spaghetti Pie.  This one was pretty tasty as well.  My only complaint with this recipe is that is takes a loooong time to make. You have to bake the spaghetti squash, and then you have to mix the spaghetti squash with the meat and veggies and bake it for another hour.  So next time I make this, I would cook the spaghetti squash the night before. I would also add more spices, as my version turned out a little bland.  Overall this recipe is a keeper though.

So why I am cooking so much, you ask?  Well, I will answer you.  Tim and I went to Denver and Boulder last week, so we ate out 3 meals a day for 6 days.  We ate a lot of super delicious food, but I was really looking forward to eating at home again – so much cheaper, and you actually know what you are eating.

So, Colorado. I love her.  I want to move there.  It was so beautiful.  Everywhere you turn there are nice people, gorgeous mountains, paleo restaurants, and excellent breweries.  Denver and Boulder are both super bike friendly too. It’s like Tim and Heather heaven.

So, what did we do?  We rode the Cog Railway to the (almost) top of Pikes Peak.  We couldn’t go all the way to the top because it was blocked by a 75 foot wall of ice.  The views at 12K feet were super beautiful though. We also met some really interesting guys who work for the US Wheelchair Basketball Team.  Let’s see.  We did 2 trail runs, hiked the Flat Irons, rode our bikes up a mountain 2,000 feet and froze our faces off on the coast down, hiked on Mt. Falcon and saw the ruins of an old mansion on the mountain top, took advantage of the local breweries (Oskar Blues, Left Hand, Avery), and got some amazing paleo food at Blooming Beets and Cuban food at Cuba Cuba.  And we watched cable in the hotel room.  We don’t have cable at home, so whenever we travel we take advantage – Jaws and Seinfeld re-runs filled our sleepy evenings.  Even when we are on vacation we tend to wake up insanely early, so we are pretty beat by 8PM.  We are some wild and crazy folk.

And that’s our trip in a paragraph. It was totally awesome.  We’ll definitely go back for another visit.

And that’s my update. I know it’s been a super long time since I’ve written, but my excuse is the same as always – busy busy busy. I had YTT again last weekend.  I absolutely love it.  I’m still not 100% sure I will ever teach, but the YTT program is totally worth the time and money investment.  I am learning so much. We learned about pre-natal yoga and yin yoga on Saturday.  Yin yoga, if you don’t know, is a form of yoga where you hold certain poses for 3-5 minutes each.  They get pretty intense in that time period. I was wicked sore on Sunday. I found it very calming though.  There is a yin class at Indigo on Sundays, and I think I’m going to go. It’s a great way to get your ligaments and tendons stretched out.

Sunday we did A LOT of yoga. I learned 2 new arm balances – firefly and side crow.  I really like arm balances although they scare me.  I’m afraid of landing on my face and knocking all my teeth out.  We also had some more beginners come to class on Sunday so we could teach them poses.  Timmy Tee came and did awesomely!!  I taught the class wide legged forward bend.  Tim said I did good. It was definitely less scary than the first time we taught a pose.  We don’t have class again for month, but I have a TON of practicing and reading and practice teaching to do!  If anyone wants some one-on-one lessons, let me know!!  And you have to give me constructive criticism back.

Speaking of being busy, I really need to take a sabbatical from watching TV!  I have too many books to read, walks to take, yoga to do. I don’t have TIME to watch TV, but when I get home from work in the evenings, it’s so much easier to sit down and watch a hilarious Archer than to pull out my mat and start practicing. I just need to form the new habit.

Ok. I’m done for real this time. Hope you are having a great evening and are being more productive than me tonight. 🙂