A long time ago, I had very good workout habits. I swam, I lifted weights, I elliptercized. Lately, my workout habits include dragging our 40lb dog around the neighbourhood once a day (mild cardio, strength-training) and occasionally doing a Billy Blanks Tae Bo video. And by "doing", I mean "marvelling at how sweaty the people on the video are getting while I sit on the couch and eat ice cream" (biceps).
Katr and I felt like it was time to step it up, but our attempts at self-directed exercise have been poor in the past (see above re: Billy Blanks) and we decided that we needed a person trainer type to actually come to our house to gently nudge us into shape. Because otherwise, we totally wouldn't go.
I also decided our personal trainer would be named Travis.
Not sure where to start, I asked our hilarious friend Elisa, who runs Vancouver studio Kerrisdale Yoga, if she knew any personal trainers named Travis. She did - but she suggested that we should do yoga instead!
I'm not going to lie to you, guys. I was hesitant. Partly because yoga is slow (which I hate) and hard (which I also hate) but also, I know that yoga is taken very seriously by purveyors of yoga and when *I* think about practising yoga, I mainly think about this:
But Katr thought yoga sounded keen and none of Elisa's other contacts were actually named Travis, so she hooked us up with ... Jane. And thus our journey of yoga began.
I knew Jane was the right teacher for us when she did NOT end her "nice to meet you" email with "Namaste". She also didn't seem phased when I told her that we were enthusiastic students but that working with us would be like "teaching yoga to fat rocks". She just brought a lot of foam blocks.
I was prepared for the slowness and hardness of yoga - but the one thing I was unprepared for was the amount of touching involved. I don't usually enjoy people touching me - but Jane gets right in there, adjusting here, gently pushing there, and occasionally just climbing on our backs in the hopes that her meagre 88lbs will help us actually get down in that dog. If our living room was the National Geographic channel, every Monday and Thursday evening there would be an hour-long show about a tiny monkey climbing all over some hippos.
We love her so much. She is awesome. So awesome that I won't reveal her last name because she's OUR yoga teacher, OURS and you can't have her!
We've only had about five lessons and so far, we're up to The "Smell Your Pits" pose - but I'm sure it's only a matter of time before she has us doing this:
I need to point out that this isn't some random awesome photo of some babe doing yoga. I ACTUALLY KNOW THIS PERSON - it's the lovely Michelle Girouard and I stole this photo off Michelle Girouard's website (or maybe her Facebook, I'm too tired from Foot Penis Pose to go and check right now).
