Yoga for Dummies! (Or Dummies Doing Yoga…)

Day Eight…

Results ambiguous.

Task Eight: Yoga with weights

A few months ago my friend Karen and I were in a car accident; our Uber was hit by some douchebag that thought racing through red lights on the streets of Oakland at 1:30 in the morning was a spectacular idea. Idiot. Of course we don’t know the identity of said idiot because he fled the scene. You know, like all up-standing, not-guilty-of-total-douchebaggery citizens do. We were fine, for the most part, although I did have the I-never-want-to-repeat-that experience of waking up in an ambulance. At least I woke up. Airbags are awesome.

What does this have to do with yoga? Nothing, really. Except that I did sustain some sort of shoulder injury that has kept me from practicing regularly since the accident happened. It’s getting better but still not fully healed. Obviously doing not just yoga, but yoga with weights is a fantastic idea for someone with an injured shoulder. I mean, what could possibly go wrong there? Downward dog still hurts but let’s throw in some weights anyway and see how it turns out. The odd thing is, it actually feels better today. I was extra careful with the shoulder and when it started to feel funny I stopped and moved to ab work. Result: very sore abs today! Seriously, I feel like I was punched in the stomach.

It’s one of those funny cosmic ironies that you never truly appreciate various parts of your anatomy until one is injured or taken out of commission. Shoulders, for example, play a larger role in picking up a gallon of water than you may realize. Same goes for abdominal muscles when rolling out of bed. I jammed my thumb once too and learned that opposable thumbs should never be taken for granted.

That’s pretty much all I’ve got for today. Not the most inspired piece of literary genius, I know, but it’s Friday and I’m about to go to an A’s game and hey, at least I did it. Today I’ve been listening to the same radio station for the entire day. I know, I’m sure most people don’t consider that much of a challenge but I do an obnoxious amount of channel surfing. Just ask my sister — it drives her nuts. And having to listen to every awful Trader Joe’s commercial and all 17 replays of Justin Bieber is more tortuous than you may think. So far though, I’ve done it. We’ll see if I can make it a few more hours and a few more Biebers.

Happy Friday!