So I’ve been doing yoga for years, on and off. I’ve always been a bit streaky – practicing regularly for a while and then neglecting yoga for weeks, months, or (during a particularly busy period during the farm era) years.
- Yoga is almost like music in a way; there’s no end to it. -Sting
- **Nope – that’s not me in the photo…
It turns out that climbing and yoga and rehabbing from injuries (oh yeah, I guess I should do a broken body parts update one of these days) are all good companions (along with weight training, apparently – more on that in the injury update post). Anyway, for various reasons, I’ve been doing a lot of yoga over the past months and when the chance came up to do a Yoga Teacher Training Course, I jumped on it. I figured taking the course would inspire me to deepen my own practice and being able to teach is a wonderful way to share all the many benefits of yoga with others. It also occurred to me I could even teach some gentle classes while travelling, say, on a sailboat while I circumnavigate. Obviously, I would wait until I was ashore on a beach or at a resort somewhere before unrolling the yoga mat and inviting people over, but based on how much fun Peta and I had doing a bit of yoga while sailing in the Caribbean last year, it seems like the two activities would go very well together.
While we were in Hawaii this year, Andee and I attended a rather funky yoga class on the beach at Waikiki. Our instructor was an exceptionally happy dude!
As for the climbing connection, climbing requires strength, balance, and coordination (and a steady mind) to be able to do it reasonably well. Yoga is the perfect activity to complement my vertical addiction! Practically speaking, winter is upon us here in the Rocky Mountains, so it’s ice climbing, gym climbing, or nothing. I’m not nearly as enthused about ice as Fabio, so I’m actually pretty happy to split my time between the yoga mat and the climbing gym as the days get shorter and colder. As I continue down the teaching road, I’m developing some classes specifically aimed at climbers – lots of shoulder, back, and core strength – arm balances and inversions – all the stuff I love to play around with and which, even as they make me sweat, infuse me with the kind of strong, positive energy that helps with whatever else I might happen to be doing in my day.
A particularly soothing yoga and meditation session with the inimitable Ally Pony.
I’m writing this post partly so you don’t get too big a shock when, suddenly, yoga references start popping up in the blog. Sometimes I think I should try to maintain six blogs – a climbing blog, a yoga blog, a sailing blog, a writing blog, a bread-making blog, a travel blog… But I am only one person and life is short, so if you think yoga is just for … um, yogis… keep scrolling down until you find something more interesting…
**I realized, as I was putting this blog post together, that I don’t have many/any photos of me doing yoga… I guess I should maybe experiment with that…
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