Farewell to Mr. Fancy Car & Yummy Mummies

Yaris and I in happier times, the day we met...

As every part of my life seems somehow tied to yoga these days, I thought I might share with you the story of Mr. Fancy Car, to whom I bid a tearful goodbye this week.

Those of you who have been in my little Toyota Yaris know that it is the opposite of a fancy car.  The responsibility of the passenger in the front seat is to shout "LOCK YOUR DOORS!" (training buddy/roommate Kelly is still the champ at that particular role), you have to blast the heat for ten minutes before you feel a thing, there is no cruise control (which made my cross country drive a challenge), and even the windows have to be rolled up manually.

Oh yeah...high tech.

Nevertheless, I love my little car, and it has served me well.  I took it in for its first official Pennsylvania inspection a few weeks ago and the mechanic said "usually I see an average of $500 worth of work for these, but all you needed was a little windshield wiper fluid."

A few days after that (as it turns out, weirdly prescient) statement, I came home late after my first Steelers game, and as there was no parking on my street, and I knew I'd be up to teach a 6am class (well before metered parking kicked in), I parked on desolate, empty Liberty Street. 

Five hours later I walked back to my car to drive to the studio and saw this:

One Month Later...Competition Recap!

The Pennsylvania regional yoga competition has come and gone, and perhaps you are still wondering...how did it go?  Did Zeb show us how it's done in his spaceship-style Crane?  Did Leigh Ann blow us away in Split Arms?  Shouldn't your knees be a wee bit closer together in Bow Pose, in that new profile photo of yours up there, you show off, you?  Yes, yes, and yes!  Here's a quick recap of competition weekend for your reading pleasure.


Friday, September 29th Competition weekend dawned with a 6am class at Bikram Yoga Pittsburgh taught by the lovely Miss Shannon.  I can count the number of classes I've taken at 6am since becoming a teacher on one hand (maybe two), given that I am not anything close to a morning person.

Sun Dance Kids and Studio News

Hello readership!   This video has nothing to do with anything...but in the four months since I last wrote, I've accumulated some videos, images, stories, etc that I kept meaning to "put in my next blog post"...and then just never got around to writing the thing. This is one of them.  Catchy, right? 

So according to Google Analytics, amazingly, people have still been happening upon my blog - presumably mostly computerized trolls, but also people who are googling phrases like "bikram yoga camel pose emotions" or "bar method butt" or ominously, "'bikram yoga' and 'teacher training' and 'regret.'" 

Adventures in Other Yoga, Electrolyte Imbalances, Exciting/Sad News

Hello my friends!  I've been getting a lot of questions about electrolyte replacements so I wanted to write a quick post on that, share a new obsession, and also some sad/exciting news (that most of you probably know already)...

So Bikram Yoga Vancouver has a wonderful blog that is worth following, full of posture discussions, student profiles, and recipes.  I'm often referring back to their post on electrolyte sources and imbalances. Click that link to read a little background on the what and the why...and read on for the how (in roughly descending order of importance) on replenishing electrolytes:

NYC National Yoga Competition: I'm so glad I did it. It was a fantastic experience. I'm excited for next year!

So if you don't have time to read this absurdly long post (and watch the various videos I've sprinkled throughout) I can sum my NYC nationals experience up in a few sentences: "I'm so glad I did it. It was a fantastic experience. I'm excited for next year." Sounds good, right? You'll notice that I don't add "and I did AWESOME!" BUT...I'm so glad I went. It was a fantastic experience. I'm excited for next year...

Have you seen this bizarrely adorable video of Kristin Bell describing her first real-life encounter with a sloth? It is BIZARRELY adorable, I love it. I'll wait while you watch.

It's the Final Countdown!

A quick post to update you all on the past few weeks before I do my usual last-possible-minute packing for tomorrow morning's flight.  I've got a lovely mini-vacation in NYC planned, where I get to hang out with this cutie pie and his mom, enjoy a mini-reunion with a bunch of fellow Spring 2011 teacher training graduates, do lots of yoga...oh, and perform on this stage in front of a couple hundred people for three minutes. Hey, I figure if I fall over and make a hilarious fool of myself, it's only three minutes.  I'll score my competition video to this song and just enjoy my time in NYC.

"The healthiest competition occurs when average people win by putting in above-average effort."

So January 28th has come and gone, and you're probably wondering how the yoga competition went...but with a team of badass yogis like these, how could it go wrong?

COMPETITION WEEK! started off with me finally, finally grabbing my hands regularly in guillotine, thanks in part to advice from Zeb, from former competitor and erstwhile Bikram Yoga Cleveland student Becky, and also just me doing it over and over and over and over again.  So I was feeling pretty good about competition, except for, as you know, my inability to consistently land Standing Head to Knee.  

What I've Been Up To For Seven Weeks...And There's Something About Mary

Whoa...has it really been seven whole weeks since my last post?  Do I really have 35 followers now and get a dozen or so hits a day even though I haven't posted in seven whole weeks!?  You folks are loyal.  

I think it's time to come clean - I may set grandiose goals of blogging weekly and adding posture-specific blog posts, etc, but at the end of the day, I will only ever be a once-a-month blogger who spends her valuable blogging time just rambling on about her life.  Unless, of course, I can find a way to monetize this sucker, given that one of my new year's resolutions is to find a few additional income sources.  Speaking of which, anyone need some grantwriting?  I'm available!