Lower Body & Yoga for Stress Relief

[Guest guest]

I had thought about doing Cathe's Pyramid Lower Body for today (last night) but in the light of morning I decided I was absolutely not up for that. I wanted simple and a lot shorter (late start today). So, as a complete opposite, I went with Sansone's Shortcuts Lower Body instead! :-) This is one of 's strength training workouts and I did it once before sometime last year. I remember being surprised at how challenging it was and now it isn't bad but it isn't great either. It is 30 minutes, all on the floor. uses 1 1/2 lb. ankle weights and since I didn't feel like going to get weights I did it with just body weight (she is very encouraging to start there too). I think you do leg lifts and then inner thigh leg lifts on one side, 2 sets of who knows how many reps because doesn't believe in counting reps. She says go until you feel fatigued. Then you switch sides and do the same thing there. Then you go on all 4s and do leg lifts and some variations, 2 sets on each leg. After that, I think you're on your back and doing something where your leg is in the air and you're bending the knee the straightening to strengthen the knee and quads, 2 sets each leg. There's also a walking, -style warmup and a decent stretch, each 5 minutes so the workout itself is 20 minutes. My legs did get fatigued doing the leg lifts without weights but with weights would have been real good. She does usually 16-22 reps each time (she also does things unevenly because she's not counting but it isn't usually off by a lot). I definitely would have benefited from weights for the other work. I did this to see if I wanted to keep it and have decided that at least for now I do only because it is so low stress and it is . It is not a great workout but if I want an easier lower body floor workout and want to see , then it is good.

I also did the Easing Neck & Shoulder Tension (Passive, 20 minutes) practice from Yoga For Stress Relief with Barbara Benagh. This was the first practice I've tried off this DVD and so far... sorry, but I didn't like it much. Barbara's voice is far from relaxing and she doesn't give nearly enough information about how to move or position body parts which I needed for this because we were doing unfamiliar movements (she didn't give some of the names so I can't even ask for help without describing it in detail). This is one of those yoga DVDs where you pick your area of empahsis (mine was neck & shoulders) and then you get a pose or series of poses, it pauses and then go gets another one, etc. so each pose flows in itself but there is no flow from one to the other. Sometimes, this isn't a problem. In this particular one it was because you were lying down, then up, then down, then up and besides that, Barbara feels a need to "introduce" some of the poses with commentary about what she likes, etc. For me, today anyway, she seemed to intrude too much. I didn't get much out of this. I also watched one of the digestion practices, to see if DH would be able to do it (he's never done any yoga) and I thought that one looked better than this and she seemed to interrupt less. Most of it looks fairly doable for him (don't know if he'll try, but he might). I also watched part of an interview they did with her... talk about boring. I have no idea how long it was but she sure didn't share anything new or useful about yoga or how to use the DVD or anything... the filming was terrible too. It is filmed on the beach in Antigua, which, of course, is beautiful, but they showed her lounging in a lounge chair at the bottom of the screen, mostly just her head too and most of the rest of the screen was water and that was it through the entire, very long seeming interview. I got sick of watching at some point and turned it off. There's also an interview with the Dalai Lama about meditation. I might watch that later. I hope it is filmed in a more interesting way. I'll definitely try the SI joint practice one at some point, because I've heard people here talk about it and the more active neck & shoulder one plus some of the digestive ones before I decide what do with this.

Off to work (and yes, I'm behind on emails/postings again but wanted to post this for my own accountability, will try to respond to others later).

neck shoulder and back issues: