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Tag: Joy

I Started Doing Yoga!

February 26, 2016

During my last visit with my AMAZING chiropractor, he mentioned that his practice is starting to hold yoga classes and the recommended that I give it a try to help with my core and balance.  I thought that was a great idea because the day and time of the class works well with my schedule, I trust him and what he recommends for my wellness and back health and I have been on a quest for a more holistic approach to my wellness and health by using essential oils and now yoga would be a great complement to that approach.  My mom also heard about the class and mentioned that she was thinking of doing it as well so we both signed up.

The day of my first yoga class was an extremely stressful day at work.  Two hours before class I had come into a very high stress situation and was very upset.  I didn’t want that bad energy to come with me into the class and I was hoping that the yoga would give me the relief I needed of that stress and anger that I was holding on to.

The yoga instructor started with us by explaining what yoga is and talking about how we need to take care of ourselves.  To use the practice of yoga as a time of healing ourselves.  Looking inward for peace rather than outward. Use your breath, body and mind to unite yourself.  Harmonizing your body and mind with breathing, posture and meditation is the soul purpose of doing yoga, as well as making your body and balance stronger.

After she talked to us she had us find a comfortable position for sitting  and focus on our breathing and become aware of how we breathe.  Then she had us close our eyes and be still.  Then we worked on laying on our backs and feeling our abdomen rise and fall with our breathing.  As women, we typically take shorter breathes with our upper airway and don’t usually take deep breaths through our abdomen because when carrying children we didn’t have the space while we were pregnant.  So we practiced taking a deeper slower breath and it calms your heart rate down.

Then she helped us practice opening up our hips because as Americans we sit too long in our chairs and our cars and our every day life.  After some gently stretching we worked on opening up our shoulders and then we stood up to begin working on balance and posture with a tree pose and a warrior pose.  After doing these exercises we got back down on the floor to lay down and get focused on breathing again and having quiet time to meditate and relax.

I really enjoyed the class.  I felt calm afterwards and when I got home to the house with the kids all fired up and loud, I sent them outside to burn off their energy.  I was hoping to try to do the exercises at home during the week; but I did take the practice of what she taught up regarding self-awareness and used it when I could to remain calm during situations that would have stressed me out.  I made myself aware of what I was feeling and then rather than tensing up my body I was making sure that I was breathing and also opening up the areas that I tend to tense up.

I can’t wait for the next class.  I also told my husband that I think this would be a great class for him to help him unwind and learn to quiet his mind.  If i can quiet my mind for even just and hour, then I think he might be able to as well.  I can’t sit still.  When it’s nice weather out and we sit on our deck to relax I can only last about 5 minutes in the lounge chair before I start to get antsy and need to do things.

What I really enjoyed about the class was not just the exercises themselves but the practice of being aware of every part of your body.  We felt our muscles from our toes, up our legs, to our hips and then throughout our shoulders and fingers.  We let our head relax and did neck curls to release tension from our neck from holding our head up all day long.  I think learning to be present is going to be key to this class.  We are so busy with work, kids, emails, messages, all of the “noise” in life that it makes it very hard to remain present.  I think this is going to help me with that, or at least raise my awareness of it so that I may think twice about how I manage my time, my stress, my projects and my health and family.

I’ll keep you posted of the progress for the next 6 weeks!

2016 One Word Resolution

January 26, 2016

For the past few years I have been using a one word resolution around the new year as the word of my year.  Last year the word I chose was Challenge, the previous year was Grow.  This year is Joy.  I want to bring joy back into my life.  I want to bring it back into my running, my work and my entire outlook on things.

Ironically Joy is also a character from the movie Inside Out.  I was fortunate enough to be selected last year to attend the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration in Orlando and we had a sneak peek preview of the Movie Inside Out.  The main character in the movie is Joy.  I connected with her.  She ran the main dashboard in the brain of the character Riley.  Joy did everything she could to make sure that Riley was happy all of the time. She tried to ward off sadness, fear, anger and disgust.  I feel like I am running the dashboard of life and my family’s life like Joy does.

I can’t lie, there have been times in the past year when I was lacking some Joy in my life.  There were some really tough times.  You may not see that in my blog posts or in my social media posts because I don’t show those sad times.  I share the happy events that we are having.  Who wants to hear someone complaining about life and the challenges they are up against or the sicknesses that they are fighting?  I’d rather share my good news than my bad ones.  But that still brings me to my point.  There are things that I am going through in many areas of my life where the Joy is missing.  I am working on that.  That is my plan for this year.  To change some of the things that lost some Joy and bring it back.

One area for certain was my running.  Last fall I was falling out of love with training – not running, it was the training that I was hating.  I was training for my marathons and was struggling with putting in the long runs required.  Something happened, I think it was burnout, that made the actual training runs more of a chore than a time of enjoyment for me.

I just completed the Walt Disney World Dopey Challenge a few weeks ago and I enjoy running.  The taper weeks leading up to that race were better for me.  The pressure was off, the longest run was done and the little runs I did prior to the races were to stay loose and to keep my mind from going stir crazy.  Now that I have completed the races I am in a recovery period where I am not pushing hard for speed or high mileage; but just getting out on the road when I want to for my pleasure.  I do have to increase my runs soon to prepare for my next races but I am not dreading the training like I did last Fall.

This is a look of pure Joy! I was so glad to have completed my second Dopey challenge and I loved every minute of the races!

This is a look of pure Joy! I was so glad to have completed my second Dopey challenge and I loved every minute of the races!

I want to add Joy back into my work.  In December I was involved with a large project at work that was taking up many hours of my time.  I had some very long work weeks; but I was also learning new things.  I want to feel the joy of trying new things and testing things out and growing in my career.  I had that for some time last year and then things got a little hectic where I felt like I wasn’t learning as much as I wanted to.  So I want to make sure that I still enjoy my work and am growing from it.

For my family life things have been a little rough at home.  I have to be honest.  The kids are fighting a lot; they have been coughing since November and it seems like every 5 minutes someone is complaining to me about something that the other person said.  I just had to pause writing this post to play referee about an elastic band that goes around the base of a toothbrush because the kids were fighting over what color they can use even though my husband did rock-paper-scissors with them to make it fair.

It must be something about the middle of winter making everyone nutty.  Even though we just had a large snowstorm this past weekend and the kids can go out and sled ride there seems to be something wrong with the snow each time they go out.  It’s melting too fast, or the sleds aren’t fast enough.  Where’s the joy???  Time for me to don my snow pants and get back out there with them more to make insane sled riding paths and ramps, start a fire in the fire pit and bring the fun back into winter.

Motherhood isn’t easy, I realize that.  I want to always have a good time.  I know not every day will be days with smiles and happy children and husband.  I know every day at work won’t be easy or fun.  But I’m trying to change my outlook.  I’m trying not to lose my cool.  I’m going to work hard this year to fill my life with more Joy!

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