Post-Fast, Yoga & Meditation
Matt and I finished a 3 day liquids fast and are now enjoying the pleasures of cooking and eating once again. I always feel better after a cleanse and don’t feel like I’m carrying around any extra crap in my body. At least for today! I documented our fast on my food blog if you are interested. I also wrote a little how-to day by day what we eat, what we do, if you want the details the entry is here.
One of my goals during the fast was to do yoga every day. I do yoga, but very rarely. Usually only when we are at a yoga center. For some reason, I can’t get into it on my own without a live leader and other people around. If I do it alone I just feel like I’m stretching and end up cheating or getting distracted. I’ve never tried the videos before. We’ve been checking out different yoga DVDs to see who we like and if any of them are worth repeating. So far the most intense one (and longest) is Power Yoga by Rodney Yee. Both of us break a sweat during the session and when I’m finished I feel relaxed, stronger and more flexible. It seems to be the most productive video we’ve done so far. The easy, slow ones are nice but I am very easily distracted and if I can go into a pose that’s a little harder, my mind stays there. So I’ve been doing yoga and enjoying it and it helps me go into meditation much easier. Matt got a book called the Heart of Yoga, explaining a lot of theory behind it. Perhaps knowing it will help me appreciate it better, and maybe do it more? We’ll see.
Meditation is something I always intend to do and put it off. It’s frustrating, I get distracted, bored and my mind races incessantly. I know it’s good for you and all that but I’ve always avoided it as much as possible. While in Peru at the yoga center I read some books on meditation and the like. The one that impressed me the most was The Power of Now. It’s a great book and has really good exercises for quieting the mind and making meditation easier. And I think the author is Oprah’s new best friend. By the way, has anyone heard that Oprah is eating vegan, gluten free and sans booze for 21 days? She’s doing a physical/spiritual cleanse and I think it’s really cool someone as influential as her is publicly talking about veganism. The world listens to Oprah, not the little people. So if she is looking into where her food came from and what it does to her body, perhaps more will not only follow but be educated.