My alarm just went off telling me it’s gym time, but I’m going back to bed. I will caution you here to never make the decision to skip the gym in the morning (it is far too easy to want to get out of your commitment at this seemingly un-Godly hour). After weighing the pros and cons of this morning’s workout, I made the decision to play hooky yesterday.
As important as it is to stay on course by keeping one’s commitment to a program, it is just as essential to listen to one’s BODY. The healthier you become through good nutrition and exercise, the more easily your mind will communicate with your physical BODY to decipher when you can be pushed (most of the time) and when rest in needed (essential time).
My day yesterday included three workouts. After lifting weight, followed by a boxing session and then the longest, highest mountain bike climb of my life, just getting home from town on my bicycle, my BODY felt broken. Spent to the vey last cent, I was close to tears on that last hill ascent! Have you ever exhausted your physical energy to the brink, such that your emotional self comes out to play? You are literally brought to tears from a training session? That was me yesterday. And “legs” were planned for today… Yeah, right! No dice!
So I turned my attention to healing through my restorative practice of stretching. People want to label me a “yoga girl,” because I manage a yoga wellness center, but I am not one. Yoga is a brand like any other; it is a money making machine. What I am, if you must label me, is a FITNESS queen! Fitness is all encompassing physical health. I lift weights to be strong, perform cardiovascular activity for my heart health, and I stretch my BODY for flexibility and anti-aging. Decades of ballet, Pilates and yoga have all lead to the formation of my own technique of stretching, whereby I combine the knowledge of all my disciplines and use yoga poses to enhance, but not set, nor restrict my practice. One-on-one stretch sessions are a gift I offer my clients, as healing as a day at the spa, therapeutic as a massage and more restorative than a yoga class. Yesterday, I spent several hours stretching throughout the day with a focused session in the evening showing myself love on my Manduka yoga mat, using a foam roller and a tennis ball for some self-appointed myofascial release (a massage technique of sustained applied pressure into areas of the muscle that are sore or “knotted”).
Today, I’ll continue to stretch my BODY, possibly after taking an anti-inflammatory ( I do not subscribe to Western medicine, but sometimes it is needed), applied heat, and followed by ice therapy on my back. Yes, I really am that sore! As my friend Isaac Williams loves to remind me, though I have many superhuman attributes I have built over years of training, I am indeed NOT Wonder Woman!
The image is a picture of my spine, showing my severe scoliosis. As crooked as as my back has been made strong, if I can do all that I do, then YOU CAN too!
I’M POSSIBLE. Are YOU?
Together in Health!
xob
BODY BY BIANCA 