I have continued with my yoga practice, but with a twist. In home practice, I concentrate on core strength and balance. Although there are so many things in my yoga practice that need to be improved, I decided that I would benefit most from these two areas. In class, we may do a few balancing poses, like Tree or Warrior III, but it's only for a short time and a few repetitions. To get better, I need to sustain the poses longer and do lots of reps to train my muscles. For instance, whenever I tried to do Warrior III, I would immediately fall out of it because my hips seemed to have a mind of their own.

The core strength issue has been a long standing one -- a sign of moving to the far side middle age: I can no longer do good ol' sit-ups. I suspect that the lack of abdominal strength also translates into less flexibility in the hips.

Labels: art_of_living