Fitness, Scrapbook and Yoga

(If you’re looking for the Blog Hop and the Give Away that ends on Mar 4, please visit here.)

Are they related?  Allow me to explain.

I’ve been very good at exercising regularly ever since I graduated from college.  Before I had a baby, I worked out 4-6 hours a week.  I did an assortment of exercises such as weight training, aerobic classes, yoga, and pilates.

Naturally things were different after my son was born.  To this date, at 18 months, he still doesn’t sleep through the night. He wakes up especially frequently from 8 to midnight. Thus, the only workout I can do is “Jillian’s Michaels 30 day shred” dvd.  It’s perfect for me as each workout is only 20 minutes, and the routine kicks butts!  So I went from working out 4-6 hours a week to 20-40 minutes a week.

Jillian 30 day shred

Then something happened that pushed me off the 20-minute workout wagon.

Scrapbooking.

Let’s do the math.  I work full time, use cloth diaper, and the toddler doesn’t sleep well.  After sending him to bed and finishing all the house chores, I’m left with about 2 hours to myself, constantly interrupted by my son.  I need EVERY MINUTE to scrapbook.  My dates with Jillian have been cancelled for months.  When I’m not scrapbooking physically, my brains are.  I’m always thinking of my next layout, making note of inspirations I see all around me, watching scrapbooking videos, listening to podcasts, window shopping online…

After a few months, my already-dwindling muscles are flabby, and my mind restless.  Don’t mention my back pain.  Even though I call myself dining table scrapper, I spend a good amount of time crouching on the carpet picking my supplies and trimming.  I feel like I don’t scrapbook enough, but my lower back disagrees.

This past Wednesday, I told myself I’m NOT going to scrapbook today, and I’m not even going to think about scrapbooking.  I’m going to meet Jillian for 20 minutes, and do Yoga.

Yoga is such a magical thing. You don’t feel the full benefit of yoga until you’ve stopped practicing. The most obvious thing for me, next to alleviating back pain, is it calms my mind.  Sometimes my mind goes 200 miles per hour and I just can’t catch up.  The only time I can shut down my thoughts for minutes at a time is when I do yoga. With every breath I take, I declutter my mind a little bit.

Not doing yoga is like never vacuuming your carpet. No matter how hard you kick clutters out of the way, the floor just doesn’t look clean. If you vacuum frequently you don’t see the impact; but if you don’t for a few months, you know you need to.

Fitness was what I ended up focusing on Wednesday.  I forced myself away from scrappy supplies, and did 20-min workout with Jillian, and continued half an hour of yoga with Rodney Yee.

I own a lot of Yoga DVDs, and Rodney Yee is one of my top two favorites.

My back feels much better.  I walk taller.  I’m more relaxed.  My mind is going at about 100 MPH, instead of 200.  I would love to do yoga at least once a week from now on.  Any reader that works out or does yoga regularly?

And I still managed to do an hour of scrapbook that night, hee hee.