Yoga and Exercise are hard…

…when you are my age. In addition to Yoga, I now am doing an exercise class called “Intermediate Circuit,” entailing following instructions from a trainer who varies our workout between weights, contortions and cardio. For forty-five minutes with no break. We started last Friday, Barbara and I, and she continued yesterday while I did funeral duty. I report again tomorrow, for the middle day of the three-day per week class. We do get Tuesdays, Thursdays and weekends off. I surely need the break. That much sweat has not come off my body since wrestling practice so many years ago, when I was so much younger.

Surely something that is so hard is good for me. I will keep repeating that until I believe it.

Yoga: Continued

It has been about six weeks since I started classes in Yoga at the Chattanooga Sports Barn. I am beginning to start to commence to partly understand what is happening with Yoga and me. A substitute instructor the second week made the comment, “Without breathing, Yoga is just another exercise.” She did not mean simply continuing your breathing. She meant concentrating on your breath.

The regular instructor for my class(es) (I have started a second, evening class) stresses the role proper breathing has in deepening your concentration and preparing your body for each position. I have picked up more terms and descriptions of human anatomy and physiology than in all my biology classes long ago in high school and college.

Deep, slow breaths, held several measures at full inhale, and longer at full exhale. Done both before and during all the active and resting positions in the Yoga session. Gradually, I have noticed that after enough breathing, some positions that seemed impossible to me the first several attempts fall into place.

This happened the other morning, when my Beloved Barbara, curious about how Yoga was working for me, asked to see the position I was currently having the most trouble achieving. I don’t know the name of the position, Sanskrit or otherwise, but from an all-fours start, you move one foot up between your hands on the mat, knee under your chest, then extend the opposite leg back as far as possible, then roll up on your toes on the foot of that straight leg, making a straight line with your body and leg, lunging forward slightly. I could not raise up on my toes on one foot. I had done this on both feet in other positions, like “downward-facing dog,” but this one had defeated me. My knee remained on the mat.

Demonstrating this position for Barbara, I did some deep breaths, then moved towards the point where I was to raise my knee. I did it. Without even thinking, I achieved what I had not been able to do in three sessions in Yoga class.

There’s something happening here, and although what is not exactly clear, I like it.

Exercise is Easy; Yoga is Hard

As a life-long non-athlete only fitfully involved with physical exertion, much less sports, at my advanced age I am paying for sloth with pain and stiffness in all my joints. Today I spent an hour being introduced to the bare minimum of Yoga positions. There were nine or ten people there, some with yoga experience, most without any, like me.

Up until today the most strenuous physical activity I have ever willingly endured was wrestling practice at Baylor School when I was 14-18 years old. Two hours of constant movement on a slimy mat with forty other guys, in a room heated by gas-fired fans and the collective body heat of all those gasping bodies. I lost seven to eight pounds each workout.

But yoga, now; that is another thing entirely. In one hour I endured agonizing stretching and body positions so improbable for a fat old man of 64 that survival is a gift. I can’t wait to start a regular class Monday. My physical problems of age, weight and arthritis have seriously impacted my quality of life. Regular sessions with weights and daily walks have helped, but not enough. I think yoga will do the trick.

We shall see.

Plants that Torture

Many have remarked on the profusion of plants, trees, ground cover and vegetation of all sorts in this area, between the Mississippi and the Appalachians. The climate is moist, warm and the terrain is wildly varied, from alluvial plains to upland plateaus to mountains.

Beautiful to look at, but the tonnage of pollen in growing season weighs heavily on all those with allergies. I didn’t need to check the pollen indicators over the weekend, I knew that my old nemesis, ragweed, was ravaging my mucous membranes. Antihistamines and decongestants are weak allies in the effort to move about in the spore-heavy air. Hunkering down behind tightly closed windows and doors, with freshly re-filtered air conditioning only gives a temporary respite. Sooner or later, I have to go out.

I love the variety of plant life in this area, much preferable to a desert’s ascetic beauty. But why, oh why, must the propagation of all plant life involve my respiratory system? Feh. *Hacking and coughing to clear passages*

Must go and inventory tissue supplies and pop another pseudoephedrine. Don’t get me started on the nuisance that meth-heads have caused me in purchasing decongestants. Signing a book, showing my driver’s license, makes me feel like a junkie. Eh. First frost is only a couple of month’s away.