Yoga - one week

I've been doing yoga nightly for about a week now and I like it. As someone who has always found exercise exhausting and unproductive, I had to let go of a lot of damage in order to be able to give this my all. I'm not going to say that it's a miracle. I hope I will be able to one day but for now, here are the things I've noticed:

* I sit up straighter. I'm much more aware of my posture and I don't have to keep reminding myself not to slouch.

* I breathe better. For a long time I've felt like I couldn't take a deep breath. I've noticed that lessening, maybe because I spend time actually taking deep breaths.

* My inner monologue is about yoga. One of the big things I wanted to change was my constant negative inner monologue, the arguing and ruminating that wasted so much of my energy and kept me stressed. I can't stop talking to myself entirely, but while I'm practicing and at other times too, I find my inner voice is talking to me about moves and stretches, not about old wounds or social commentary or complaints. This is a big plus.

* I'm sore. One of the reasons I wanted to do this was because I'm tired of being in pain. My legs hurt, my back hurts, I'm stiff and sore a lot and I thought it was because I don't do any exercise. After a week of yoga, I'm still sore, more sore in some places and less sore in others. I think my stress level would go way down if I wasn't always in some kind of discomfort but I haven't achieved that yet. Hopefully in time the soreness will go away.

* I enjoy the nothing. One of the poses I do is corpse pose (shavasana), which is basically lying on the floor doing nothing. This has always gone against my nature. I never felt justified in doing nothing because I always felt I had to be productive to prove my worth. Lying down for 20 minutes and just breathing was a waste of time, not to mention uncomfortable. Now I focus on my back, getting it to stretch, making my legs do the work, feeling my spine relax by degrees. It's not doing nothing, in fact, it's quite active. I don't know if it's helping me or not, physically. My back still hurts, but it's given my permission to do 'nothing' and not feel bad about it. That's a start.

* I'm determined. I'm determined to continue. I know from my reading that this isn't something that fixes you up in a week. So I want to check in here periodically with updates and see how I'm doing. Can I give it a year? I hope so.