This past weekend I spent in San Francisco.  I met my best friend who I hadn’t seen in almost a month in the city.  While we did do a couple things (I’ll be sharing them in a later blog!) to keep a healthy lifestyle, however, yesterday following out 6 mile run we stumbled upon a breakfast offering bottomless mimosas.  Needless to say, following that amazing find; and a 4:30 wakeup call to take a cab, BART, bus, and plane back home, my body was left feeling dead, stale, tired and dragging.

I went to my 6:30 yoga class this evening excited to detox body from my body from the inside out.  As I began class the first breathing exercise woke me up.  Sending fresh oxygen to my brain, I began to get energy for class.  As we began our warmup postures, my tight body began to open up, stretch, and realign from the tweaks I put it through sleeping in a ball on BART and in a straight line in my aisle plane seat.  By the third posture I was lightly sweating, envisioning all those mimosa toxins and public transit germs slowly sweating out of my pores out of my body for good!  (Or until someone else offers bottomless mimosas!)  By party time (the first water break) I was thinking wow I got this under control!–Then I began to pay!

As I entered the balancing series, I started to feel a nausea feeling in the pit of my stomach.  I reminded myself to take long slow inhales, breathing into the nausea.  I fell into the yoga trance, focusing solely on my breathing and before I knew it, it was time to lay down on my back and relax in savasana.  In savasana, all my veins and arteries had opened up, allowing my arteries to surge fresh oxygenated blood to all my tired depleted cells, ridding them of waste and rejuvenating them with nutrients.  I like to think of a spray nousle on a hose cleaning an area of concrete that has become cluttered with dirt and grass after weed wacking your yard.  Class may be painful, but without a struggle in class you are allowing those grass clippings and dirt particles to keep clogging your body.

By the time I finished the floor series I not only felt stretch out from head to toe, completely cleansed from the inside out, but also mentally reset letting go any emotions I was left with leaving me calm and ready to tackle the work week, training week, and just general life week ahead of me.  Just as it is nice to start a week with a clean house, it is also refreshing to start the week after a yoga class.

So that is why I need yoga in my life.  It gives me a workout toning my abs, glutes, back muscles and shoulders.  It cleanses me from the inside out ridding my body of toxins, leaving only fresh oxygenated blood to keep my energized and alert.  It allows me time to myself to think about my emotions and then let them go so I can tackle other challenges outside of the yoga room.  Most importantly it leaves me wanting to eat better today so I don’t have a crappy balancing series tomorrow!  It is hard enough to balance on one foot without your body screaming at you from the inside at the same time.  But regardless I now feel better than if I had simply had a ginger ale and advil!

So time for some electrolytes, and some yummy protein chili.  Tomorrow’s run and yoga class will be strong because I cleansed today.

Coconut water with vitamineral green and chili over a bed of arugula.