So lately I've been doing a lot of yoga. Well, a lot for me. Certainly that is not as much as many yogis out there are doing. But it's a start. I can understand now how yoga can be responsible for weight loss and muscle strengthening. It's definitely more than just sitting around doing stretches. A lot more. Sometimes, depending on how the routine or the circumstance, I break out into a pretty heavy sweat. And although I'm not breathing heavily in the same exact way as I would doing some sort of cardio exercise, I'm definitely exerting my breath and strengthening my lungs. I'm actually surprised and amazed. I mean, I always conceptually understood that yoga had benefits. How could something endure with such high praise for so long if there were not benefits galore? But I've always had a hard time in the past finding time to fit a yoga practice into my life. I thought I had to take a class and that would be expensive, and I was working so much and making so little, it just some impossible. But finally having the peace in my life to find myself and what I really need and love has done wonders for me already. My Mom has cable so I can follow the yoga practices on the On Demand feature. And eventually, because of the help of my mother, I will have my license and a car and a job, and school, and hopefully then I can take a real class and get certified to teach. Hopefully doing it as much as I can now will give me a foundation for when I want to take it to the next level.

What I really wanted to write about though is how much yoga has helped my shoulder. it still hurts, but not nearly as much as it did before. I think the pain has been causing me to readjust the rest of my body to try to avoid moving my arm at all. So I was getting twisted and off balance. After a couple weeks of doing stuff to open my chest, shoulders, back and hips, I feel like a different body. It's like I want to do yoga right now because I feel so good afterward. It's really helping me build muscle to because you have to hold these fricken poses in, like, a lunge position. So you're lunging one way, holding your arms out and circling them about your head, all the while breathing deeply and controlled. It's damn hard. Harder than a good curves workout for sure. I'm looking forward to taking this activity further.