Tuesday, January 20, 2009

A Mental Setback

I’m halfway through with my second week of P90X. I managed to squeak out last week with convincing myself that my 30 minute Rodney Yee Power Strength yoga was an acceptable substitute for the P90X yoga. Who was I kidding? Truth be told I hate the P90X Yoga and I would gladly bike 50 miles or lift weights for hours in place of it.

Today was the dreaded yoga day and I ran out of excuses for not doing the real thing. I only had time for 45 minutes of it and it kicked my butt. Not only did it drain my strength, but it drained my spirit. I hate swallowing the fact that I lost most of the strength that I spent months building last year. But even harder to swallow was the fact that 15 minutes into today’s session I was cursing yoga. I mean I think I really hated it. It was just too hard. This past weekend I read an important part of my yoga text book. It clearly stated that a good yoga program ‘should not go to the point of fatigue.’ Well, that means that I shouldn’t go past the first 10 minutes of P90X. It’s such a double-edged sword. If I lift weights and don’t feel sore the next day I’m disappointed and feel as though I didn’t work hard enough. I know that if I attempted a yoga session that didn’t hurt and pose a big challenge I wouldn’t be satisfied. Yet I long for a yoga session that I really enjoy; one that leaves me feeling refreshed and mentally renewed instead of drained and depressed.

Doing the P90X yoga is definitely not good for my dream of becoming a yoga teacher and it’s going to be hard to maintain my passion and love for yoga during the next 90 days. Maybe I should go back to my plan of substituting yoga that I actually like in place of the dreaded program. I have to keep reminding myself that yoga is about more than just the challenging poses. Maybe I should type that 100 times over to get it through my head.


Yoga is about more than just the challenging poses.
Yoga is about more than just the challenging poses.
Yoga is about more than just the challenging poses.
Yoga is about more than just the challenging poses.
Yoga is about more than just the challenging poses.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure what type of yoga you study... and i just happened across this blog, but perhaps an ashtanga class is up your alley? i find the flow to be quite challenging and the primary series to be quite the workout.

with that said, p90x yoga for me wasn't yoga. p90x was intense though... i didn't end up going all the way through because i found the women models not to be what i wanted to look like (your pics look great though!)

Anonymous said...

"Yoga is about more than just the challenging poses."


But they are so fun!

Anonymous said...

Hey Paula, I have to agree with Anonymous - P90X yoga is not what the yogis were dreaming of, even though i do Bikram which is probably more equivalent the real yoga almost has nothing to do with the actual postures, from what I have read the postures are only a preliminary to get you to the actual yoga which is more the meditation.

Your partner in yoga