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I was having a lovely lunch at an organic vegan restaurant in Newtown yesterday with BB2, having an awesome lunch of cauli soup (and inspring me to make soup in winter just soups!!) (and devouring the most amazing raw wagon wheel – WOWOWOWOW!), and one of the other lovely patrons said to me ‘I think you might work at the coop – I recognise your little girl’.

We get to talking, as the team at the coop are very friendly, and I recalled overhearing in the shop that this partcular girl was a vegan, had written a book, and her customers were all asking her when she was setting off overseas, so I thought I’d do the same.

And I was so pleased she did. She went on to tell me she was travelling to Asia and to Europe with her yoga teaching and vegan cooking workshops in her back pocket. Given my love of yoga, we got to talking about different types of yoga.

I mentioned that I felt very fortunate I had found the type of yoga I was now doing in the ‘suburbs’, as when I was doing it in the city it was a totally different type of yoga, and while it was fun, got me absent minded, and occasionally got me into a state of flow, but it is nothing compared to the benefit (and the workout!) I get from doing my yoga now.

It reminded me of being in a class one night, and my teacher Lyn coaching us along in the midst of a challening move, saying ‘the best yoga to do is the yoga can’t do’!

It was a bit of any uplifting and light hearted class (as many of them are in the rest periods!!), and my marketing brain got thinking onto T-Shirt slogans to try and attract more people to the amazing benefits of yoga. The best I came up with, particularly for walking around the Bay and targeting that market, was front – ‘My yoga teacher’s mean’, and for the back was ‘and I like it’.

It was one of those nights that really progresses my yoga, because I kind of endeavoured to never moan and groan about certain moves or sequences again, but rather to see them as an area needing work today, and I was able to see it an an opportunity to strengthen and tone a weakness, or bring balance back to my body or mind (or both!), depending on what needed doing at that time.

I’ve had an incredible journey with yoga, and to many that would seem like something they wouldn’t align themselves with, which is fair enough, and I imagine there is a multitude of reasons. But what I would suggest is that if you’re looking for something to help you break the cycle and create some new fabulous habits in your life, maybe yoga could have a part in that. I propose to you that it can expose you to a whole heap of benefits.

And if you try it for three sessions and really don’t love it, try another yoga school.

My yoga is what I call yoga for normal people. Lisa and Lyn are incredible, and just like you and I. When we first went, I was 8 weeks post BB1, had a sore back, and needed some space to breathe. I went on to use yoga to help me feel fabulous in my second pregnancy, and be in a commanding position to have an awesome second birth (having had an induced, not-so-fun-one the first time).

There is rarely meditation.

And if you want a good idea that this yoga is a seriously fabulous workout and not full of ‘woo woo’, let me just add that my husband has now been coming with me for years, although recently he reduced his frequency because the Wednesday night workout where too hard after his Wednesday morning Cross fit session, and his thighs couldn’t handle another workout’.

I often talk about fear and hope and the choice you have. In this case, I think it is better expressed as can and can’t. Some people go and don’t continue because they can’t do something, rather than thinking well I’m here, I can do this move in this way today, and I’m ok with that.

Because it means you’ve an in-balance.

Rx