© Dmitriy Shironosov | Dreamstime.com
You can’t really get to 50 without having tried yoga. I discovered it initially as a strategy for coping with stress – which was reasonably effective – but what really struck me on those first attempts were how quickly you progress from being able to do nothing in terms of flexibility to really rather surprising results. Most of what I have learned is courtesy of the fantastic Vimla Lalvani whose Diet’s Don’t Work 2 video is really excellent for beginners – even if you don’t want or need to lose weight. She is a good teacher and that particular DVD has some very good routines in it. The bow, pictured left, is one of the poses that it took me some time to master. Oddly, though, even when I haven’t been practising yoga for months at a time, it has now become one that I can achieve reasonably easily. The great thing about yoga is the breathing and the stretching and the wonderful sense that it gives you of your own body. Somehow it makes you want to eat more carefully, to drink more water, and to enjoy the sensation of being more flexible. The mental benefits are also very good. With all that going for it, I’m not quite sure how it can be that I sometimes lose sight of practising. Unfortunately, I loaned my copy of Vimla’s VHS to a friend and somewhere along the way it was lost. It’s hard to find in stock anywhere these days but if you should come across a copy anywhere in your travels, I definitely recommend it. Sadly, Vimla won’t be with me this autumn, but it’s time to get back to yoga and I plan to make the bow a part of my daily routine.
I have a theory about this! The time that you spend doing yoga or pilates is YOUR time – you set aside other things and people to spend an hour or whatever on your practice. That is one feelgood factor. There’s also the moral buzz of actually having done it – feeling virtuous. And thirdly, if you don’t forget everything else and concentrate on what you’re doing, nothing will happen, so it unscrambles your worried brain. Undeniably a physical benefit is flexibility and it’s nice to be able to surprise the physio by being able to easily touch your toes. But another physical benefit are the endorphins coursing round your bod! So there are lots of reasons to be cheerful about yoga and/or pilates. If my steroid injection works, I’m going to go to a workshop in Nov to get a routine for home practice. The trouble is that if I do anything at all at home lying on the floor, the cats think it’s part of a fab new play routine for them and are very pesky.