Yoga, deceptively difficult

A while back I had some very inconvenient fainting issues. I started getting dizzy, nauseous, had a headache and finally ended up on the floor. It turns out I was hyperventilating due to stressful circumstances aka hating my job. Trust me people, when your job starts becoming a health hazzard, it's time for a change. Anyway, my doctor told me to relax which is something I've never been able to do, even the word relax makes me nervous. Once again he told me to try yoga or some other form of relaxation therapy where I could focus on my breathing. So despite my misgivings about yoga I decided to give it a try and go on a quest for my inner peace and tranquility, like there is such a thing. I went online and bought a yoga dvd seeing as I'm not the go-out-join-group-and-do-stuff-together kinda girl. Now I can curse and sweat in the privacy of my own home and boy, did I curse.

It starts out easy with a lot of breathing excercises which were just what the doctor ordered but breathing at a pace of six breaths a minute is not only hard (to breath that slow anyway) but also got me feeling aggitated, get on with it already! Not a good start. Then came the sun salutations, the warrior poses, the upwards and downwards facing dog,... which all seem very simple in theory. It turns out I can't even stand still without falling over. Those who know me will probably not be surprised seeing as I have some mild balance issues. Besides continuously falling over (3 bruises people!), I simply could not bend the way I was supposed to so either those intructors have no bones or I have the flexibility of an eighty-year-old woman. The best example is downwards facing dog (left) which seems easy but I could not get my palms and the soles of my feet on the ground while streching my legs. It's just impossible! And that's one of the easy ones! After fifty minutes and only 4 poses that I could actually do without falling, breaking something or tearing a muscle, I called it quits.

Right now, inner chaos seems healthier.

Don't mess with me honey

And now something completely different. My doctor advised me to relax, which is believe it or not very hard if you're as tightly wound as I am, seeing as stress among other things is one of the causes of my gastro enteritis problems. I took my dear friend Katrien up on her offer to do some yoga on her Wii Fit, hoping it would calm me down a tad. But experience has taught me that all that breathing and bending just irritates the hell out of me so no success there.

Luckily, there's also Wii Sports which is in my opinion not only a lot more fun but also exhausting and this resulted in a not only calmer but also very sweaty Ginny Jones, for about 30 minutes or so. I especially loved the boxing seeing as I'm not good at aiming, balancing,... basically everything that requires some form of restraint. Did I also mention that my timing also sucks? Anyway, I just love letting everything go and pounding the shit out of my opponent like any lady would of course. In the end I knocked out three guys in a row, went up a few notches (I am now level 500 something or other), had one hell of a work out and relieved my stress levels for about 15 minutes. Not bad, not bad at all.

The pain of pilates

I recently started doing pilates and I have to say, I'm feeling the burn in places that were previously comfortably numb. I've been wanting to take exercise classes for a while now since I basically like doing it (strange but true) and hate all other kinds of sport. Let me tell you why: first of all I'm required to go out into the world which is a real buzz kill at 7 pm on a cold and dreary night and secondly I'll be confronted with my fellow man. Don't get me wrong, I like the human race and all, I just don't like them there when I'm huffing, puffing and sweating all over the place. And that is why, people, I decided to buy some exercise DVDs so I can work up a sweat in the comfort of my home. Some might call me crazy for jumping around and clenching my buttocks in front of the warm glow of my TV but all I can say is, in a few weeks (hopefully) I'll have buns of steel, what about you?