Still in bed with a morning coffee on this first, shiny new day of the year, but I have just watched live with hubby the little intro video by Adriene Mishler (Yoga with Adriene, YWA) welcoming everyone to the mat for this 30 day January Journey of MOVE! It was really exciting seeing so many Yogis coming to the mat and sending so many Happy New Year wishes from across the world. Quite a considerable number of Yogis from the UK and Europe! So maybe you were there as well?
I’ll be posting a weekly header post for the Yoga with Adriene’s 30day MOVE series, as a place where we can share any thoughts we might have about the joys or the struggles on this journey. A sort of ‘our very own YWA MOVE Club’.
(Of course, do feel free to also post in the main channel, whatever feels good! 😉)
So how are you finding this first week?
I’m still concerned that I might have to opt out of some sessions, as my foot (metatarsals) is still giving me some grief. But by now I know how flexible these sessions are, and I do want to experience the lovely journey that YWA leads us on every January.
I think I can by now call myself an intermediate beginner; I know most of the positions by name now, I can do most of the easy poses although the intermediate to advanced poses like fish or crow are still far away out of reach. But daily yoga is a thing for me, and when I don’t do my Yoga, I feel the need for a good stretch.
So onwards and upwards with YWA’s MOVE and feel free to share your joys and struggles by reply!
Well I've printed the calendar off and stuck it next to my running plan - so that's a start👍I haven't done any yoga since the beginning of December as both my live and zoom classes stopped permanently in the same week 😭
So in preparation for YWA on Thursday and Friday I worked through a couple of recordings of zoom sessions and I'm hoping that the daily Pilates will have kept me flexible enough 🤞
Well, I signed up for this, and I do want 2022 to be my healthiest so far. I've re-started C25k again, starting New Year on Week 2 run 3. I am a complete beginner at Yoga (not counting the few months I did yoga in my 20s when I was the most rigid person in the class). So let's see how it goes
CBDBAdministratorGraduate Gold in reply to Newbie59
Oh wow! Great 2022 resolution and well done for complex week 2 of your C25k revisit!
I only started daily Yoga last year with the then January challenge. What helped me was working with props and I still have my trusty blanket and Yoga Blocks handy. Here is a post with some links: healthunlocked.com/strength...
Day 1 in the books! Fairly intense with some sustained downward dogs, but it felt great. Looking forward to tomorrow. This is my 4th year of YWA and she never disappoints. 🙏🏻
Yeah, hubby swept the courtyard this morning under blue sky. I’d be running outside if my foot would have allowed me, but I did an inside rowing session instead. I’m missing being outside more from when I was running 3/week. 🙁
Me too, finished day 1, after an intensive rowing session this morning with intervals. Then shower, then to the mat for this yoga session, hubby joining me after having swept the yard outside under blue sky!
So we both found the long down dog positions quite hard! But the stretches felt all great after my rowing session, specifically the hand stretches and lunges, and the windshield wipers.
Lovely way to start the Sunday morning, but it all takes it time. 30 day rowing sessions at 9am with intensive intervals. Than 15 cool down. 15 min stretches. Shower. Yoga. And then finally breakfast!
That takes me almost to noon. So it was a lovely way to spend a Sunday morning but I wouldn’t be able to do this every day in January. So I might have to put yoga into the evening period again, between finishing work work and before dinner. Hmm 🤔
Could you go straight into the yoga instead of the stretches? I do try to do my yoga straight after my runs - though our heating is not working last night so I had to go and get showered and dressed straight away to avoid the post workout chills!
I’m playing with the idea doing it the other way around, shower, yoga and straight into rowing. And then a quick wash. But that feels water-wasteful. But I don’t like doing yoga not having showered. There is something about coming clean to the mat hmm… thanks, any suggestions allow me to think this through, so much appreciated.
Heating.. ufff… our heating is also on its last legs and we are glad it has made it this far through the winter. We just don’t want to get another gas boiler and would like to move to a more air/ground converter. But our boiler needs to just last long enough for us to get a few quotes. (We have 1/3 now) hope you find good ways to keep warm!
Fab!!! Yeah, the long stretches of dogs and one leg dogs were for me quite strenuous but I also had a Yoga break for about a week. So i think my yoga-muscles need to catch up!
Do you think YWA is in general more physically or less physically strenuous compared to other yoga sessions you know? (I had assumed YWA to be less strenuous)
It's a bit difficult to say, I think it's mainly the speed of the class to be honest.
The classes I've done all had a similar format so you'd "arrive" by lying on the mat usually, then gentle warm ups, then postures, balances and sequences, followed by breathing practice, meditation or relaxation. You would generally be slower in the way you got into and out of a posture and usually after each posture there would be a counter pose to "incorporate " the movement. Also sometimes we'd hold a posture longer and breath into it to get a deeper stretch. Each class would also have at least one sequence of linked postures like the Sun Salutation which could get a bit intense depending on the speed it was done at.
I do like that Yoga can be done in so many different ways and each way benefits your body and mind in differently.
Thanks for this. Really interesting to read. I agree, the beauty of yoga is the immense diverse expressions of basic human phenomena, like movement, breathing, stretching, stillness and meditation, activeness and strength .. etc. Nice! 🙏
Day 1 HERE completed too!🧘♀️🙏 it felt so good to be back on my mat after a troubled December...Enjoyed getting back into the zone with the breathing, and those cat cows were great. Getting my heels down now in DD, still not bringing my leg through in one go, but I did do the full planks (feeling pleased😏)
Day 2 felt much more comfortable for me, I think partly because yesterday was the first time in yonks that I'd practiced any yoga 😂. Got my groove back. Really liking the neck stretches and twists, just what I need at the moment! Benji v. cute today 😍
CBDBAdministratorGraduate Gold in reply to roseabi
Ohh looking forward to it. I’ll be doing yoga in the evening.
I have an intention to catch it live (haven't quite made it yet!), but I'm usually much more of an evening yogini - I expect I'll relapse at some point...
CBDBAdministratorGraduate Gold in reply to roseabi
Ha ha … doesn’t it drop at 5am or some unholily early time like that! (Not sure unholily is a word 🤔 but spellchecker says it is)
Day 2 done here as well and I totally agree with roseabi about the neck stretches. For the last couple of days I've had a really stiff neck or it might be the very top of my back and was a bit worried about doing the session but its actually feeling SO much easier now. Oh no now I can't escape the BOLD font 😂🤣😂
Hello CBDB, I’m back for a 2nd January and so far so good. I have only done 2 sessions but am finding them much tougher having missed my weekly Pilates classes at the gym for 2 years, especially those planks. If I stick to YWA everyday I know it will do me so much good.
So I have only done yoga once - and that involved small goats and pigs which were very distracting. Saw this and thought I would give it a go - I've just done day 1 and I have to say I did find it quite difficult - turns out I may be even less flexible than I had imagined!
CBDBAdministratorGraduate Gold in reply to Goatrider
Yes, It was harder than usual. My only suggestion is to make adjustments where your body needs it.
My knees are still a bit sensitive so any positions with knees bending 180 degrees are a no no, so I replace them often with cross legged seats.
Full planks are hard on my hurting toes at the moment, so I do half planks with knees down.
I use blocks a lot, and that helps immensely.
So there is really no shame to adjust, and I got stronger even whilst using a lot of props.
More importantly, it made it so much more enjoyable that meant I would look forward to this daily practice!
Thanks for the encouragement, I’ll keep at it… I’ll keep telling myself that if it was easy it wouldn’t be worth doing!
CBDBAdministratorGraduate Gold in reply to Goatrider
I found it really worth doing. Here is a post I wrote how S&F workouts changed me, including Daily Yoga, and it was rather the every day movements that stood out:
Just finished with day 2. Neck stretches get my thumbs up!
I recently came across a brilliant joint mobility warm-up video for rowers ( tinyurl.com/mryv5v6v ) that feels great, but takes a heck of a long time. 20min warmup for my 30 min row!
But many if the positions are ones that Adriene does in her practice, so I can see how yoga would be the perfect warm up workout as well.
Might need to ponder about how I can use that. Only thing is that I like rowing before showering, but I like doing yoga after.
Day 2 Down Under done this morning, so glad I didn't wait until this afternoon when I usually do my yoga as its 31 degrees here now. Planks and yogi bicycles 👍 and not a lot of sitting today 🧘♂️
Came down to our gym corner in the living room late morning to do Day 3 today (with hubby) and we caught the end 5 min of the live broadcast.
I think I hadn’t twigged that she is doing them live although @RoseAbi mentioned something about that.
So is there a specific time each day where she goes live? I didn’t catch that from the website or emails?
Although it’s a live broadcast, I think the content is prerecorded. So do we call it still live? Conundrum.🤔😵💫🤪
Anyhoo, good one. Nice stretches. I’m still taking it easy with stretching my toes (due to metatarsalgia), so all down dogs get replaced with half planks. Which suits me just fine and many of the positions (half side planks) were still reasonably hard, although not as hard as they would have been as full planks.
Does she hold the positions longer than usual? Methinks that is intentional! 🤔😉 And increases exertion. 🥵😓🤗
Day 3 was pretty active I thought! Adriene was chatting on during those bridge poses, phew 😊 I enjoyed this one very much though, and it seemed to go by very quickly!
CBDBAdministratorGraduate Gold in reply to roseabi
Yeah. Although I would have like breathing space into windshield wipers more. It feels like they do my glutes a world of good after other workouts!
Puppy pose might also work as a down dog sub if you need a change from half plank. I think I've seen variations where people do downward dog standing with hands on a chair too.
I only did about 10 minutes of YWA MOVE Day 3 this morning as I was still sore after falling over a kerb towards the end of my run this morning. 😒😒
My right knee and chest are bruised and sore making it hard for me to do some of the poses. I'll see how I feel tonight and try again as I've been enjoying the series so far. 🧘♂️🧘♂️
CBDBAdministratorGraduate Gold in reply to buzzards
Oh nooo! Sounds painful! Take care of your knees and chest! 🤕🙏🩺🛋
Thanks. I went for a short very slow run this morning and my knee was fine. My chest is still bruised and breathing is a little painful. I'm hoping I can get through the full 30 minutes of Day 4.
So far so good! What I really like is that all the sessions are around 30 minutes. The shorter ywa sessions feel too short for me and the longer ones are usually competing against time pressures and I get restless. Most of the MOVE calendar is around the 30 min mark and for me that flies by but stullleaves me feeling I've done something beneficial 😊. I approve 😍
Having fun with days 1-3 so far, muscles gently complaining today though the leg part of that is probably also due to yesterday's fast-for-me 10k. The pace/intensity is good for me, just enough to challenge without being overwhelming, and avoiding the rather slow start last year which made it a bit harder for me to get into.
Yeah, the first half of todays flow was rather fast. I notice that as my props (blocks, kneepads) have to always be put in the right place and today that was challlenging due to speed. But loved the second half with emphasis on breath.
I made it to the "live premiere" today, kinda fun 😊 I left a comment at the end but accidentally hit send before I finished typing so my remark was a rather terse "Good" 😂
CBDBAdministratorGraduate Gold in reply to roseabi
I'm late doing today's session, feeling tired and really wasn't feeling like it. But it was great not too energetic and some nice relaxing bits and I do love pigeon 🐦
My buddy joined me halfway through, but she didn't do much yoga.
Nucky the cat
CBDBAdministratorGraduate Gold in reply to roseabi
🤣🤣😻 At least she didn’t sit on you whilst doing planks!
Yup, Day 6 was oof! 😅 We had some tech kefuffle in the first few minutes, than trying to catch up, then just keeping going at that fast speed 💨⏱🥵🤪😅.
Ok, so I have to admit, when doing the slow pistol move sitting to horizontal and back, I need a strap to help raise my upper body from horizontal position !
(But a year ago, I couldn’t lower my upper body without flopping. Now it’s an elegant little, late tiny thud 😅)
I definitely did a tiny thud as well 🤣 and had to use my arms to get back up. I found this session a bit of a challenge for my unhappily stiff neck so adapted a lot of the postures.
Burning abs as ever on day 6! I think the toughest for me was the side plank sequence which was OK for the core but really painful on the arms and shoulders.
I was feeling quite happy with my progress on the first few of those pistol sit ups, thinking all this yoga was paying off. And then the last rep I ended up stranded on my back waving my legs around like an overturned beetle (is that a yoga pose?) as my abs just gave in and wouldn't lift me back up!
Oh, and the boat sequence was a bit of a surprise as I'd thought we were moving onto relaxation...
I haven't started this yet but having read all the comments from the first week I'm not sure this is for beginners like me 🤔
I will try and have a go at the first session this week . . . .
CBDBAdministratorGraduate Gold in reply to Newbie59
If you want to have a taster, I’d suggest day 4: FLOW. I loved that session so much!
If you like the fact that we are all doing it together, I’d suggest to give the series a try and just be ok with adapting to your preference and having blankets and props ready.
Of course there are sessions that are easier than others. But it’s great to do it whilst others are as well.
I also think YWA is great for any Yoga newbie. She really gives you the feeling that whatever you do is awesome.
(I think of myself still as a newbie, and with our respective bodies, we all have various weaknesses and strengths)
Crikey! I’m in my third year with Adriene and found that tough, my neck was a little sore. Its definitely not a beginners practice and if you haven’t done it yet I would recommend taking little breaks if needed 🙏🏻
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