yoga / anxiety cat

I reached my yoga goal - three times this week. Now if I can just keep going, establish that as a routine, I'd be so happy. There are a bunch of other things I should be doing to improve my health (sleeping more, balancing my diet, etc.), but it never works out for me when I try to tackle them all at the same time, so I am focusing on just one for now. When I'm all set with the yoga, then I'll move on to something else.

I only started doing yoga about a year ago, so I still consider myself a novice (especially since I have not been able to consistently stick with it yet). It took me a while to find a DVD I liked. At first, I was using one that was way too easy, and I felt like I wasn't doing anything. Then I switched to another and had the opposite problem - it was super advanced. I couldn't even keep up with that one. Eventually I started using this YogaAway one, and it works perfectly for me, for now anyway. I love it because 1) it repeats each position/stretch several times, giving you ample opportunity to get the feel of it and make sure you are doing it correctly, and 2) the voice-over tells you exactly when to breathe in and when to breathe out the entire way through (and in a way that isn't awkward). I have a hard time maintaining deep breathing on my own, so I find that really helpful.

My anxiety has been higher than usual this past week, and aside from yoga, I've been trying to ride it out with funny movies and websites. I found this Anxiety Cat tumblr today and laughed over it for a long time. I can relate to almost every one of the entries.