In being consistent with my run streak in which I am committed to at least one mile a day, every day, I want to try writing at least one blog post a day for the next seven days and get back into my yoga practice. I’ve been feeling super blah, after the LA Marathon almost two weeks ago, and would like to get myself into a more motivated place. I sent out a bunch of resumes earlier in the week, but no bites yet. I’m picking up gigs here and there, which help with bills, and to give myself a more scheduled regime, I think blogging, running and doing yoga daily will be beneficial! An unconventional, unpaid work schedule of sorts, but one that will hopefully manifest some new opportunities into light!

I haven’t been doing yoga since the marathon – I just haven’t felt like it. The body hangover is real! It’s only been two weeks without yoga, but I can feel the difference! I feel clunky and slightly achy, both while running and being sedentary. I am always so surprised at how not doing yoga, even for a short period of time, makes me feel in my body. My runs, and my life, feel so much better when I incorporate a 20 minute stretch session in a few times a week! Which of course writing this, and you reading it, the reaction is like “obviously”, but still! Intrinsically knowing something, and then experiencing it, can still be a dose of reality!

Today I decided, today would be the day for yoga, writing posts and continuing run streak 2.0. When I do yoga, I mean that I follow online yoga practices, specifically Yoga With Adriene. She has two new videos up, which coincide with me not doing yoga for two weeks, and I had every intention of doing one of them. I’ve been feeling very tight since the marathon, and as I said before, pretty blah. I went with tried and true – a practice I knew would be soothing and gentle, and was still newish to me. Enter: Yoga for Hips and Lower Back Release. What could be more perfect for the first video after running a marathon? Today, nothing!

This practice is fantastic first thing in the morning, when you want to stretch without working up a sweat or put stress on your wrists. It gets into the hips and lower back, which often get strained when you’re a runner, so it’s great as a pre-or post-run practice. It was definitely a reminder that I could do some more work to stretch out and open my hips, which always helps with my running!