One-Legged King Pigeon // Eka Pada Rajakapotasana

In the past couple of months, I've fallen in love with yoga. I love how it stretches me physically and mentally--how I find myself slowly accomplishing goals that I never thought I could reach. Each class, I find myself being able to bend a little more, stretch a little more, hold my weight a little longer, push a little further.

I'm still very much a beginner. I can't bend as much as I wish I could, or hold myself in positions that are challenging (like Plank or even Down Dog, which is supposed to be a restful position...I'm sure it will be, eventually) for as long as I'd like, but I see my progress in millimeters and sometimes even centimeters, and that encourages me.

When I first started yoga. I couldn't stand up straight, lean over, and touch my toes. I could almost touch my toes, but not quite. Now, very recently, I realized that, after I've warmed up my muscles and stretched them a bit, I can put my hands, palm down, flat on the ground (and by recently, I mean yesterday). When I first started yoga, I couldn't do a full plank for more than two or three seconds. I had to drop into half plank. Now, I can hold my body in full plank for...well, not very long, but longer than two or three seconds. It's still very, very hard for me, but I see improvement, and for me, that's huge.

I started this journey with Lisa Senetar, who teaches yoga in Berea at Fitness, Friends, & Fun. I still try to make it to her class every chance I can get, but as I don't have a membership there, it's gets a little bit expensive after a while. She was the first person to really challenge and encourage me to pursue this, and I'm so very thankful she did.

Now, I regularly take a class with Casey Stull, who teaches in Richmond at the Richmond Athletic Club where my husband and I have a membership, twice a week. At first, I was very, very nervous about this class. As I said, it's offered twice a week: Thursday is Beginner Level Yoga, and Tuesday is Power Yoga. As a novice, the idea of Power Yoga scared me. A lot. Luckily, Casey was very encouraging and understanding of my fear, and pushed me. Now, I very much look forward to both classes each week.

One of the things I love most about yoga, so far, is the fact that I never have to compete with anyone. I do what my body allows me to do, and I challenge myself accordingly. Every person has to move at their own speed, meet their own challenges, and do what their bodies' tell them. It's very personal, and in the end, when you make progress, it's very rewarding. Each time I go a little further into a stretch, or move into a posture a little easier or a little more steadily than I did the class before, there's a real sense of accomplishment that I've never felt before (at least as far as my personal physical health is concerned).

I asked Casey to teach me a pose I've seen in her class, as well as in yoga journals and online. Like any good newbie, I googled "yoga poses" when I first started and scrolled through them, making a mental list of the ones I eventually wanted to try. I came across a pose called King Pigeon or Kapotasana and immediately wanted to be able to do it. This is what a Full King Pigeon looks like:

One reason I love yoga so much is it showcases what the human body is capable of. 

As babies, we contort our bodies into impossible poses, yet as we grow older, we let those muscles grow tight because we don't use them in the same ways. I want my body to be able to do those things again, to move again, and I'm so excited that I've started that journey.

My King Pigeon: Day 1

*Thanks for helping me with the name, Casey!

Every Journey Starts Somewhere

This is Vince

Every journey starts somewhere. Mine began when I met the man who would be my husband, Vince (you'll be hearing a lot about him).

For 25 years, I ate what I wanted and exercised sporadically. I spent a majority of my time drinking sweet things, eating crunchy things, and enjoying activities that required that I use my hands, eyes, and brain (and which I could sit on my butt to do).

When I met Vince, all that changed. See, I'm the kind of person who mimics the people around them. I don't mean to do it, but I'm always so scared that they'll reject me, that I try to fit in with them by being similar to them. Meeting Vince was no exception. When I met him, my world was turned on its head. He was like no one I'd ever met. So when I discovered how aware he was of the foods he ate and the way he treated his body, I started to be aware of those things to.

This is Juno

We started hanging out (sitting up until 3 or 4 in the morning singing and talking) in December of 2010. Somewhere between there and February of 2011, we started dating, and we got a dog. She was a one-year-old red doberman that was being abused by the other dogs in her family. We took her without hesitation.

In December, I started thinking about what I ate. I ate what Vince ate, and tried when we were apart (which wasn't often) to eat healthy foods. In February, after we got our wonderful pup, I had to start thinking about fitness.

We walked Juno every day at least once. We wanted to walk her for an hour if we could. In just a couple of months (from December to April or so) I dropped quite a few pounds and inches. It felt great.

Our Wedding Day

In July of 2011, just a few months after we announced officially to the world that we were an item, we decided to go ahead and get married. We gave ourselves plenty of time to get in shape for the wedding...just over two weeks. (Lots of people thought that I was pregnant, but we were just really, really excited, and really, really sure.)

In those two weeks, my old roommate, Lydia (who's expecting her first baby in October!) made us a workout plan. She's a personal trainer, so I knew it would be tough. And let me tell you, it was tough! I don't think I've ever been so sore in my entire life than after a few days of her workout.

In two weeks you don't see much of a difference, but it was the workout series that kickstarted the journey I'm on now.

After we got married, we decided that we would pay to be members of a gym here in Richmond (the Richmond Athletic Club). There, I started taking Zumba, running/jogging on the elliptical, and using free weights (mainly for my arms), and most recently, I started taking Yoga and doing the abs workout used in P90x videos.

In the 11 months since we've been married, I've seen definite improvement in my muscle tone (meaning, there is starting to actually be muscle tone), but I'm nowhere close to being where I want to be.

My plan is to dedicate this blog to my weight loss/muscle toning/fitness journey. I titled it I Want to Be a Tree because of a blog post I wrote on my other blog, Love is the Key to Everything (if you wanna check it out, there's a tab link at the top of the page!). I hope using this blog to document my successes and failures will help keep me motivated to keep going. I'll share my struggles, my weaknesses, and my victories for anyone who wants to read it. My hope is that at least one person will benefit from my story, and maybe add to it with their own.