Back to the Mat.

A combination of events and epiphanies showed me what was lacking in my life. Yoga.

I've mentioned that my daughter is ridiculously fit again. She has been doing an online fitness challenge, and boy, did it work. 

Work. Work is...uncertain, and uncertainty breeds stress. I just don't have that warm, fuzzy sense of job security a single lady in her 50s would like to have at this stage of life, and I may be back on the market again, soon, and damn, THAT thought is highly stressful.  AND I sit all day, every day, in an office that is a pressure cooker of stress, and have noticed my posture has suffered, my ass certainly has spread, and I'm basically becoming a human letter "C" with extra sand at the bottom.  And that is NOT a happy thought if I'm going to have to go back into the job market at 56!  I can't do anything about my actual age, but I definitely want to stand up straight and look energized and healthy.

And I realized that I had the tools to deal with these issues:  I own a yoga mat, and I have yoga DVDs, and that subscription to Gaiam TV. (The jury is still out on that; I'll keep it another month and see if I find a variety of yoga programs to make it useful.)

So I've dragged out the mat, again, and OMG - sometimes the time is just right and everything clicks. I'm suddenly addicted to yoga. I want to do it morning and evening, every single day. I'm sleeping better already, and after 20 minutes with Rodney Yee's Yoga for Beginners I really did feel a difference when I walked out the door to the office.

I'm definitely a beginner again. OMG, you should have heard the noises my knees made in warrior pose this morning! Not the joints, but the tendons in my legs - sitting all day and walking when I can is NOT enough. No pain at all, just a quiet, stretchy popping, like the early sounds of a bag of Jiffy Pop on the stove. A feeling of tight things loosening up, getting stretched and used again. And my head felt better too - it quieted the yakkity about spreadsheets and deadlines. I remember why I like yoga. I want to do it every day, forever.