For Me?!?!

Last weekend, Tim spent Friday night carving our pumpkin that we've had since September. I hadn't really planned on carving it, but he was dead set on it. So he did, and the kitties of course put in their opinions on it as well.

But little did I know that he had a reason! Saturday night, Tim picked me up from work (UNI football, I was beat) and he turned the opposite way of the house. Told we were picking up dinner, I was confused, because he had been to the grocery store at least three times that week, telling me he was going to make me dinner. Then he informs me there are people at the house, for me, cause they were all there to celebrate my birthday!!!

All Halloween decorated, balloons, tableclothes, little pumpkin tinsel and skull lights. It was absolutely adorable in the house. He'd even completely cleaned while I was at work! The food table had all sorts of snacks and smores and the pizza we'd picked up. The island had been turned into a drink station with hot chocolates and other fun beverages! It was awesome.

And the best part, set up on the porch was a portable little fire pit that he had bought. AWESOME. Smores year round! Right in the backyard!

















It was a great night. Matt was there when I got home. The Day's from Next Level were first to arrive, and Nate came up from Des Moines, Julie came down from Minnesota and brought Nick who also had Brandon show up. Jayson brought a friend, and later Dieter showed up. It was a pretty sweet night. One I havent had in a long time. The bars were far more entertaining than normal (it being the weekend before Halloween and all) so we ended up closing down the bars. Something I havent done in well over a year or two. Craziness. Although, the craziness was only helped by the discovery of the glory of Rumchata.


I hate surprises, but I loved my surprise party. Great great night to remember :-)

Iowa City Yoga Festival. Part Two!

Saturday:

Nothing like starting your Saturday morning with some 7am pranayama! Ok, I would rather be sleeping, but I had to try it out. Jim Bennitt is rather well known in the area, so it couldn't be too bad. I just have the attention span of a gnat that early in the morning when I am supposed to sit still….

Second class of the day was the one I was most looking forward to, but also the one I was fearing the most. Having heard everything that I had about Andrey from James, I think anyone would be super nervous. He is a very intense human being. And his class followed suit. He started with speed talking about his universal yoga practice with charts. I think I understood a little more than half. Such a heavy accent at that speed, I did the best I could. We got started with the practice, and he raced through it, and its an intense practice, I can only imagine how crazy it could be at normal speed with legit intent. He expects everything instantly and at full possibility. This one girl kept getting yelled at because she wasn't listening to the directions. Although, frankly after a while, she basically gave up and that just pissed him off more. He killed my shoulders though. They aren't meant to move like that!

I was supposed to have James as the next session, but after Andrey's arm murder (combined with two Gauntlets the day before) AND knowing what James expects, I decided I would rather have brunch! Nate was in the same boat, so we ventured off to campus in the rain to locate the Bluebird Diner. Second best decision of the weekend! The place was packed, and rightfully so. Absolutely delicious. I was responsible and got a nice omelet. And then split this GLORIOUS order of pumpkin bread french toast…. ;-)

Afternoon was Gabriel Anzoulay, Thai Yoga. The guy looks exactly like you would want your yoga instructor to look like. And sound like. And just like Dreaming Bear the night before. The women weren't anywhere close to shy in showing their "enthusiasm". At first he seemed to take the class a little bit too seriously. But really, in partner stretches like this, people doing them for the first time, you have to expect a little silliness. Otherwise, it might take it to the completely other level of totally awkward. I'd done partner yoga before, and that was quite helpful in the different Thai yoga poses, but it was a learning experience for sure. I'd love to try more sometime. 

Dinner was slightly more complicated than brunch, driving around in humid stormy weather, for far longer than should be done. But eventually landing on a sweet sandwich place. Which which! Yum. And crashing asleep.

I just love this picture of Benji.

Sunday:
Realizing that you have to be checked out of your hotel room before your first class of the day isn't all that bad. Until you realizing its pouring rain. Oh well. Jim Bennitt's purification session was up first. And I think it was maybe 45 minutes in to the two hour session that my brain said, "Hey, I'm done, this is too much focusing in a short weekend" and from then on out, I was just focusing on getting through the class. The breath work was kind of cool. It was the kind that churns your stomach in and out and in circles. Jim's a really easy talker, you can get into what he's' saying (until you lose focus). Although he had us attempt peacock, and I am pretty sure I was going to break my spine with my stomach. It was pretty entertaining though, "If you're one of those people with boobs, you're going to need to scoop them up." And by pranayama work at the end, I was making up stories about the people near me in my head….

Thus cuing me to probably leave early. I really wanted to stay for the Gong bath in the afternoon, but that involved five more hours of focused practice and then getting home at the complete end of the weekend. But leaving early meant i'd have nearly all of Sunday left to be productive. Sadly, I voted the latter. But I will get a gong bath in sometime again, I am determined!

It was a great time. I will go again next year (maybe just keeping in mind that I have total ADD). Definitely an edgy event for Iowa, and hoping that it will become more of the norm!

Iowa City Yoga Festival. Part One.

I seem to have a habit of blogging about events that happened two weekends ago. So why break habit now? This past summer, I was crazy lucky enough to be able to train with James Miller and earn my 200RYT certificate. It just so happens that he produces the Iowa City Yoga Festival every year. October 12-14 was just the weekend! I knew most of my classmates would be there, and I knew some others in attendance, so of course it was a great time. 

First off, best decision ever made, staying at the same hotel as the festival was being held in. I can only imagine the nightmare that would have been trying to drive in and out all the time. So that was a happy moment right away. Plus, it was a really nice new hotel. A surprising find in the middle of Iowa, that's for sure. The festival opened up on Friday night with all of the vendors, and of course, I fell in love with this gorgeous coat immediately. Trying it on was the biggest mistake. I kept staring at it all weekend. However, I am proud to say I didn't succumb to the pressure! 

I was barely in the conference center before seeing classmates of my training classes, and kept seeing them all weekend long. And James was all over the place, it being his event, but the weirdest part of that, was that he was dressed in normal clothes. Not even a suit, but nice pants and a button down. Now, I saw this man every single day for 13 hours a day for two weeks this summer. He has a uniform. Short yoga shorts and tight t shirts. Never once did we see him in anything else. So pants were just a very oddball look. 

We go in to the Opening Ceremonies that night and Matahara was playing on stage as we found seats. And who sits directly behind me? Andrey Lappa, James' ultimate mentor. I was star struck far more than I should have been thats for sure. But he was only an attendee of the evening, and the speakers were just as awesome. Max Strom has the voice of butter. I would listen to him read a phone book. The aerialists…..were there. Tao Porchon-Lynch is the world's oldest yoga teacher. She is 94 and came to stage in leather pants and stilettos. Adorable. She told us about helping the French Revolutionaries and helping people escape in the war. AND learning with Iyengar. Insane. 

Andrey Lappa & James

Tao Porchon-Lynch

Then on came Dreaming Bear. The man had his spine infused five weeks ago and yet he got on a plane from Hawaii to come perform for us. And I'm so glad he did, it was super crazy weird and froofy, but he totally sucked you into it. He had us with linked pinkies and saying aloha to each other with cheek kisses. Good lord just typing that weirds me out. But by the end, we were all singing his Little by Little song and it STILL gets in my head. He was cool. And the older women were totally cougaring out for him. He had long curly hair and the face of Bradley Cooper. They were swooning for sure. A great way to end the opening night. 

 

Everyone needs some Whole Foods snacks for a weekend of yoga!

Yo Ho Yo Ho!!

Pirate Nessa hopes there's enough rum to last all October....

Downward Facing Dog (Day 2).

For those of you that don't scroll down to see if this was the most recent post, I can almost guarantee you that you missed one (or at least two if you haven't seen October's cat calendar picture). So you should scroll a bit and at least read the first two chunks explaining that I'm going into a potential realm of boredom for you, a yoga post a day for the month of October. But I'll try to keep you entertained, it's the least I can do.

So the first post was about my first yoga class ever. And no one goes in and can rock their first sun salutation flawlessly on their first go. In fact, if you can remember just the steps alone the first time around, I applaud you. But I was sucking it up in even downward dog, a resting pose. A pose for those that need a break, and yet I was needing a break after the first few seconds of downward dog...

Fastforward to now. I love downward dog. I do it more frequently than just in class. It's the most amazing stretch for the parts of me that usually ache the most. In the beginning of learning, I did the lazy man's version of the pose. In fact, a lot of the people at the rec center classes STILL do this version. It involved letting your shoulder blades hang out on your back, with no tension. But pull those babies back, and wham, whole new level.

When first instructed, holy cow. I avoided it at all costs. Its work. It hurt. And it just didnt seem like that's how a resting pose should feel. But my instructor kept coming back at me, class after class, pushing between those blades making me realize it's full potential. And now, I could endlessly thank her for it. My body goes straight into the proper position, pain free, stress free, feels great. And I could hold it for hours. I could hold it, moving within the pose for those awesome stretches. (Oh that sidebody twist feels so good. And calves? They get loving too.)

October Yoga Challenge.

I'm already behind in something I haven't started. Go figure. But I'm not so far behind that it's not worth even starting, so here it goes. I love October, for lots of reasons, some stated in the previous post, well, most stated there. But still. I also have this weird drawing towards yoga (if you haven't picked that up about me, you need to read more posts of mine instead of acting like my mother with a tivo and fast forwarding to what she thinks are the "good parts").

Anyways, I have had a lot of things to think about involving the hippie zen world of yoga in the past few months and never really got around to working through/writing them out. So my thought is, for the month of October, I will post once a day about something yoga related. Could be long, could be short, could be a quote, could be me spouting off at the mouth for far too long about something I couldn't do in class. So we will see how that goes.

We'll start easy since I better get another post in about it today to make up for yesterday. What's the best place to begin? The beginning, I guess. I never once was interested in yoga. Not ever. I saw the mats leaving my dorm room, never thinking about where they were going and for what actual purpose. Not that I was so inclined to exercise. I was happy with my beginning workouts of cardio as a freshman, and that was as far as that was going to go.

Until I moved back to Cedar Falls. Our city rec center is really a pretty good facility for being a public one, and I figured, I have the time, might as well get to a few classes. Turns out that yoga was quite a popular one, so after several weeks (maybe even months) of avoiding it, I ventured out, with a safety friend at my side to try out this completely foreign concept.

To make it only that much more nerve wracking, the instructor was a girl that graduated from my high school a year before me. A very bendy, very toned, very skinny girl. Welcome to very potential humiliation. I could lead you to believe for the rest of the post that she was a huge bitch and was snickering everytime I fell over, but that was far from the truth. The class was at least 15 people, and I doubt she looked at us any more than anyone else. She was totally professional, but at the time, it sure felt like all eyes on me. We were in the second row, in front of a whole other row on the side, right next to a mirror. In my nerves, it felt like I might as well have a flashing frame around me.

I legitly don't remember much about the actual class, but I do remember have ZERO idea about anything. Ihad probably never in my life ever even heard the term downward dog ever before. And for most of you, I bet you know how common that pose is, and by common, I mean, its like breathing, it happens all the time...but this meant that I had my neck cranked up the entire class, trying to follow what everyone else was doing. So I was a solid three/four seconds behind everyone else, and even then I was in some sort of weird contortion of each pose since I had no clue where each limb was really supposed to be. Although, that wasn't a huge problem in reality, as I was so out of shape and untoned that every pose only could be held for a few seconds. I fell out of each one well before the next pose was called. Each downward dog seemed like it was held for hours. Oh the burning arms, the shoulders on fire.

An hour later, I was done. I don't know if then I knew I would return. I bet I thought I would give it another try or two, but I can pretty much guarantee you that at know point, even in the first couple of years that I would be where I am now with it. At least mentally. Unable to go long without it, or the mental mumbo jumbo starts going on, and the body starts yelling at me to get with the program and get to the mat. I need it now. I'm not addicted, but I am. When I think back to where I was when I started, it feels like I have been with the practice for decades, but in reality, its been only a little over five years. Crazy. I mean, after the first few months, I got INTO it. For awhile I was going to yoga classes five days a week, but for the most part now its only 3 times a week, but still. For people with normal schedules, that probably isn't the frequency that is going to happen. But I will say it time and again, if you want to do it, you can do it. You might have to start with every modification known, and some made up by your own body and mind, but you will get there. I did. And that's saying something.

Best of the Best: October!

It's finally October! The best month of the year! Weather is changing, air is crisp, pumpkin flavors permeate everything, sweaters come out, Halloween to look forward to, but the calm before holiday season.....

Oh yeah, and my birthday is Friday ;-)

Is it Halloween yet?

New post soon. I have really sucked it up the past few months. Even worse, nearly every post says that I am going to be better about it, and never am. But I have a post in mind! How my new pilates instructor has the intellect of a pea. At least when it comes to pilates. I shall call her Peabrained Pilates Poser.

On a side note, we didn't really do Halloween as kids, I mean kinda, to our grandparents house and a few select others, but not to the degree of most. And then later, I went out once in college with a TOTAL cop out of a costume.

But tonight. TONIGHT. I bought my first Halloween costume. I would say since elementary school, but I don't think we ever bought my costume ever. It took quite the perusing at the store, and I'm pretty sure the guy that is forced to stand outside the dressing room to make sure we don't steal anything wanted to scream at me to just pick a costume and leave already, but I got it. Super cute, but not yet approaching hooker status. Love love love it. I won't say what it is quite yet, but I will tell you the rejects involved a German beer girl, a Referee, and a Eskimo.

The latter was a pretty high contender, leading Tim to try on a related costume (well, remotely related) and despite me not picking the Eskimo, he was so pumped about his costume that he ended up getting it anyway. The kid might as well be prancing on the walls about it. So even if our current plans fall through, we WILL be going out this year. I demand to be cute for Halloween in public!!