We all want a stress-free holiday season, but let’s face it: it's often a tricky time. We long to enjoy vacation days, spend quality time with family and friends, and celebrate whichever rituals we honour during the festive season.
Muscle aches and stiffness can be a natural consequence of running, especially when we’re increasing our mileage or adding things like speedwork or hill running to our training regimen. Our muscles become stronger by rebuilding and repairing themselves as they adapt to more challenging activities. But for any change of routine, it is important to be able to differentiate between the body’s natural response to increased training (adaptation) and pain that is caused by injury or overtraining.
In their speech at my wedding and at my brother’s wedding, my parents talked about how they had “grown up” with us, how they had learned important lessons with — and through — us. I didn’t truly understand those words until I became a mom. When I got married, I thought I was an adult. I thought I was clear on who I was, that I had a good handle on how to deal with most situations, and that my life experiences so far had prepared me for raising kids.
Summer. The word conjures up images of sunshine, water, heat, the outdoors. Most of us spend the better part of our year looking forward to summertime and all that goes along with it.
One of my favourite things about summer is my outdoor yoga practice. Feeling the fresh air on my skin, listening to the sounds of nature, and feeling the ground beneath my feet. I practice in my backyard, on a dock, in a park, by a lake, wherever I can. Sometimes my kids will join me, sometimes they’ll just climb all over me, and sometimes I enjoy the peacefulness of a solo practice.
This is an important discussion. As with any other physical activity, yoga has varying degrees of difficulty and not every body is suited for all challenges. Sometimes our bodies (or our minds) are simply not ready for a posture.
Last weekend I was at the Yoga Conference in Toronto. In one of the workshops, the instructor spent a long time discussing the importance of cultivating awareness of the space and time in between the poses in our yoga practice. It’s quite easy to focus on your breathing, your muscles, and your body when you’re actually holding a yoga pose on the mat - when you’re still - but the challenge lies in keeping that awareness, that presence of mind and body as you shift your body from one pose to another. This concept is not a new one to me.
