As a (mean) yoga instructor once told me, "noone kicks up to a headstand in my yoga class"

What is more important to you?  The journey or the end result?  This is obviously a very important question to ask yourself when making the decision to try and get healthy.  This is usually the difference between the “I am going to take my time and do it right” and the “I need to do whatever I can do to lose the most amount of weight in the least amount of time” (picture me wearing one of those plastic sweat suits that wrestlers wear to drop pounds before a match, peddling furiously on a bike, sweating, red faced – not pretty).  Well, I am a libra. My whole make-up is literally (and astrologically) about balance.  Unfortunately, I am constantly trying to get it and most of the time I am weighted to one extreme or the other.  So, the patience that is required to “do it right” is not in my dna.  You will most likely either find me ellipticaling at high speeds drenched in sweat or sitting on the couch too lazy for even a bathroom break.  There is no happy medium.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, I am now practicing yoga.  Perfect for me because it pushes me to my limit, gets me soaked in sweat, and is spiritual all in one.  $13 well spent.  A few weeks ago I went to a new class.  The instructor was pregnant, which didn’t stop her from doing the class, which actually made me a little angry.  Nothing like a pregnant lady in a backbend to remind you that you’re out of shape. Anyway, I could tell right off the bat that she was tough.  During the class, the woman next to me was trying to get in to her tripod headstand.  For the yogis out there, you know that this headstand itself isn't the difficult part.  It's the way that you are supposed to get in to the headstand, by raising your legs up together as opposed to kicking them up individually, that is tough.  Some yoga instructors think that getting in to a headstand anyway that you can is a success. Not this one!  She wouldn’t let the woman do her headstand the “wrong way”.  I am no instructor but I have been perfecting my headstand and I think that it would be an accomplishment even if a crane picked you up, turned you upside down and placed you on your head.  So it made me think about my own approach to getting healthy. 

If I don’t start to think long term, I am never going to get anywhere.  We all know that 1 week of extreme exercise is easily cancelled out by another week of crappy food and no exercise.  I have to decide what’s more important to me.  The journey or the end result.  And I have to learn how to find some balance in my otherwise unbalanced life.

By the way, in the case of the woman next to me she did kick up to a headstand and once she got the feeling of being up there she was able to learn how to do it the “right” way. Take that preggers.

Until next time…