Italian Hydration

I wasn't kidding about really hydrating for practice today. Saturday led is packed these days, and the weather has been in the 90s here in the desert. Along with windstorms, which means an unbelievable amount of pollen in the air and in the pool, but that is another story. Last night I had the bright idea of drinking water until my stomach hurt. Well, the idea was to drink lots of water; the stomach ache was an outcome, but not part of the original plan. Small price to pay, though, all in all. And to really seal the deal on my hydration, I ate a bunch of olives. Mmmmmmm. And The Cop and I discussed canoli. He's never had one. Unbelievable. The only thing that would have made my hydration routine more sucessful would have been to eat a canoli. My Mom thinks my eastern religion and yoga practice are weird, weird, weird, but she would have been proud of my Italian hydration system.

It worked, too. I wasn't shaky or on the verge of blackout at all this morning. Well, except for coming up from ardha baddha padmottanasana, but that's par for the course. I felt pretty strong and kind of weirdly puffy--from all the water and salt in my system, I imagine. But it was one of those lovely practices where you feel alert and bendy and relaxed--all the way through. I still get a little tense in the bhujapidasana through supta kurmasana part of the sequence, but not so bad today.

But the real fun was when we got to navasana. Volleyball Guy goes around on each navasana and spots people so we can go up into handstand in between. I was spotted on navasana 2. Ah yes, it felt so good to get up there, and then I was all focused on feeling that little lock in my core that I felt the day before. Yes, very good to reinforce that muscle memory...uh, what's that? Oh yeah, it's Volleyball Guy saying, "Karen, everyone's waiting for you." Oh boy--everyone else had done their lolasanas and gone back into navasana and waited and waited and waited, and there I was upside down and musing about bandhas. Sorry, everyone! Isn't yoga lovely--how it offers you a chance to be a big klutz in the midst of a crowd of people? [My original posting used the word "spaz" instead of "klutz." I was just reading, though, of some problems Tiger Woods ran into after describing his recent golf game using that term, which is, apparently, quite derogatory in the UK. Sorry to anyone who read the original post and was offended. It's a pretty innocuous term here in the US.]

Another quiet evening slated for me: The Cop is getting ready for work, My Gift comes back from San Fran tomorrow. I have a movie all ready to go: John Scott's primary DVD, lent to me by Crim Girl in class this morning. I love watching different teacher's DVDs. It's so interesting to see how different people teach the same poses. Is it strange to sit and watch yoga DVDs for pleasure? LOL! I think I have an Ashtanga problem.

And I know I have a blog problem: I love reading them. Here's a good one written by a waiter in NYC. About the ups and downs of working in the food service industry. Check it out: http://www.waiterrant.net/ The article he refers to in his entry is really interesting, too.