My brain works a mile a minute. At any one time I'm thinking about a project at work, the food I'm cooking for dinner and the rest of the week, and, oh yeah, the fact I haven't yet made the bed. It's tough to let the mind be still, which is probably why I like running so much. There's something that seems to happen chemically that slows the mental gears down, at least during the time I'm doing it.
Another tool for quieting the brain is yoga, which I recently picked up again after a hiatus. During yoga you focus attention on your breath as you go through specific poses. Focusing on each inhale and exhale keeps you from thinking about other stuff (or at least it does until those dinner thoughts sneak back into your head and you shoo them out again.)
The problems often begin with the attempts to properly do various poses. As a runner, I experience tightness in my quads, hamstrings and calves while having extremely flexible hips. Inevitably, I end up with strains and even tendinitis from yoga class. And I go to a gentle yoga class!
This past Saturday, I ended up with ankle twinges because of some lunges we were doing. Previously, I mashed my hip on several occasions. The funny thing is that I haven't had a real running injury in years; yet I'm repeatedly inflicting pain on myself with yoga. Why? And should I continue? Or should I just switch to meditation instead? For now, I'm going to continue, but if I get one more serious problem, I may just spend class in "child's pose" or just curl up in a fetal position and count sheep.
I know what you mean about the mind working a mile a minute, that's why I like running too because you can just let your mind drift to whatever it wants to, haha
ReplyDeleteAnd about yoga, I've done it twice in 10 week time frames both times, and I really liked it. I thought it helped my flexibility a lot. I also thought it was a good cardio workout. Do you think the injuries you've been getting are resulting from not doing as much strength or flexibility training in general? Sometimes I think those kind of injuries are a sign you might have to work on those areas more (so yoga helps you stretch areas of your body you never thought you had, haha). I guess I would try to keep up with yoga, and my guess is the injures will start to fade away.
And I'm glad I inspired you even a bit to start a blog!