The Human Pretzel

This post coming to you from beautiful Calgary! As will (hopefully) many more, as I try desperately to get caught up before the Project ends in (sniff, sniff) 2 week. 2 weeks exactly, actually.

So, I'm crossing this one off the list. Because I swear I tried. And in the end I found a couple of moves that I will continue to use, because they did feel really good. Especially after I nearly threw my back out doing a move that my mother failed to get a picture of, causing me to have to do it again. Honestly, I've never seen anyone have as much trouble using a camera phone as my mother. She always swears she didn't touch anything, and yet, somehow something always goes wrong.

I have chosen not to post all the pictures of my attempt at some of the poses...because quite frankly they're embarrassing. But I will post some of them. I'm sure I'll hear you all laughing from here...

My plan was to do a 30 day yoga pose challenge I found on Pinterest. But it got very complicated, very quickly. So I found another one designed to help relax you before bed, which is where I'll start as this becomes part of my routine. Maybe once I'm a bit more confident in them I'll move to the more athletic poses.

The first few were pretty easy.

I think this is mostly to focus your breathing.

This is the Standing Deep Breathing. It was a bit awkward to get my arms in this position. It didn't feel great.

Half Moon Pose. This felt nice. Although my back cracked in about 37 places when I did it...

More cracking. I'm sure I'm supposed to go back further, but this was as far as I could manage for now. Something to work toward, I guess!

I think this is supposed to be the tree pose. Not sure why I have such a weird look on my face...

Corpse pose. My fave. Super challenging.

A very awkward triangle pose... 

 Cobra pose. This is another keeper.

Full Lotus pose. I feel like I'm flying!

Floor Bow pose. Not exactly as graceful as the example picture, but again, something to work toward.

This. This is the death pose. And I had to do it twice. Notice the look of complete and utter torture on my face. It was around this point that I gave up on my original plan and moved to a more beginner friendly game plan. Seriously, I had to barrel roll out of this and my back hurts just looking at the picture.

This is the Child's pose. I liked it. In fact, I stayed in this position for a little while. Long enough to make my mother ask me if I was ok. So relaxing.

Standing Forward Bend. I think I should work on my flexibility a bit. Not overly graceful.

 Wide-Legged Forward Bend C. This felt good too.

Butterfly pose. Glad to see I can still get my legs all the way down on the floor. The yoga pro in the picture couldn't even do that. I hung out in this pose for a long time too. Ahhhh...

Seated Straddle. Definitely not as intense as it should have been. I think my upper body is supposed to be down on the floor. Maybe someday.

 Head to Knee Pose A. This hurt more than I was expecting. Like, a lot. The back of my legs killed.

Bridge pose. I used to be able to do this much better. I could go back into a bridge while standing when I was in high school. Ah, those were the salad days.

Plow pose. This felt surprisingly good and was much easier to do than I was expecting.

Shoulderstand. I hope you all enjoy the shot of my butt. This also felt nice. I'd like to work on this one too.












And that was my yoga experience. For those of you who think yoga is all relaxation, you would be wrong. It takes a lot of core strength, which is something I'd like to work on, so some of these poses I will continue to use.

 So, although that almost happened to me, I enjoyed doing yoga (for the most part) and I will continue to do them, and hopefully work toward some of those more challenging poses.