Days 3-9 of #NamasteStrong Yoga Challenge

Another week of yoga poses as part of the #NamasteStrong yoga challenge.

Day 3 of #namastestrong  yoga challenge, outside our house is chaturanga. This one I feel I have got pretty good, but they are only getting harder from here.

Day 4 of the #namastestrong yoga challenge is a crescent lunge . I have a hard time getting the backbend in this as I lose my balance and backbends are not easy for me either.

Day 5 of #namastestrong yoga challenge is boat pose I can't get my legs very straight, it's as good as it gets rt now. On my back deck of our house.

Yoga inside on this rainy day. Feeling very humbled seeing this photo of me. Not as flexible as I thought. Day 6 of #namastestrong yoga challenge is salabhasana Gotta keep working at it.

Day 7 of #namastestrong yoga challenge was a yoga pose I have never done before and a little difficult. I did the prep stretches that @happybettyann posted in her video. Those were helpful. Then I tried the pose. Then I grabbed my yoga block and tried it a few times under my extended leg. That was helpful. Then I did it a couple of times without the block this is the result.

Day 8 of #namastestrong yoga challenge is camel pose or ustrasana. I had a chance to go to a yoga class today too! Kids are back in school, so time to get back in to an exercise routine again.

Day 9 of the #namaste yoga challenge. I like to support my back doing this pose, but you can also put your hands on the ground. I can do that, but it has been quite a while since I have done this and wanted to be careful as I am a little sore from doing a boot camp class on Wednesday night.

Days 24-30 of #NamasteStrong Yoga Challenge

I am going to start out with my post from Sunday. What you see there is what is left after I try to do a flying Warrior. I thought I was warmed up and now my hamstrings are very very tight and I tried a variety of ways looked up a bunch of modifications and was trying it with both black and a strap and ended up pulling a hamstring muscle in my left leg. Not what I wanted to happen ever and certainly not how I wanted to see ending this challenge.

So now I backtrack to Saturday and show you two variations of pyramid pose. The one on the right is what was on our challenge sheet. And the one on the left is what you typically see for a pyramid pose.

So this next one is from Monday. It is a standing backbend. I knew I wasn't going to be able to get very deep into the post and thought I would briefly try it out and see if it engaged my hamstrings are not. I think because of my lack of flexibility in being able to bend over it did not engage my hamstrings at all and was able to complete this one. My leg was wrapped all yesterday and will be today. I actually ordered a adjustable Velcro thigh and hamstring wrap that should be delivered soon to start wearing. I have been I seen often and taking Aleve and applying all of the RICE principles. I looked ahead at the next few poses and they might be possible but I am not sure. I am updating this post as I do them. So we'll see.

Day 27 is flying pigeon pose. I had done this one before and had an idea of how it was supposed to work and feel but there was no way I was going to be able to straighten my leg today.

The last three poses of the week. This last week especially seem to give me a lot more challenges especially considering I injured myself trying to do one of the poses. I think that injury made me more aware of my body and questioning my own strength. I know I have more work to do and we'll keep practicing these yoga moves. Tomorrow I will share a challenge I am going to do the first 10 days of October.

Why You Should Try Instagram Yoga Challenges

Do you have Instagram? 

Are you wanting to get in shape or stay in shape? 

Do you find other people motivating? 

Do you need something extrinsic to motivate you, like reporting results to others?

Do you want to work out from home?

Do you want to workout for FREE?

If you answered yes, to any of those questions you might want to try out an Instagram challenge. I have participated in a couple of them now and the results of the #JumpForCore challenge I just completed are pictured below. I also participated in the #NamasteStrong Yoga Challenge for the entire month of September.

So, here is what you need to do. First Follow Me on Instagram! because I plan to do some and maybe we can motivate each other! Next, do a search on Instagram for #yogachallenge. There are a lot of pictures to look through but look for posts that have a picture that shows many poses. I am also going to do this #HippyHalloween Yoga Challenge because I think it would be very beneficial for me to work on right now with how tight my hips are. You could still join in that one because it is all month.

Yoga Challenge I am doing this September #namastestrong

I decided I needed to do something to get me working out more and doing yoga more, and since I had seen this yoga challenge on Betty Ann's Instagram, I thought I would follow along and participate.

I am not familiar with the other two yogis, but I am sure after a month of following them through these daily challenges, I will be. Check out their websites to learn more about them and their practice: Matr3Moni and Gina Heminover.

Below are my pictures for the 1st 2 days!

Be sure to FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM so you can see how I am doing this month and other stuff I am up to. Some of these poses look tough, so we'll see how well I can do.

Days 17-23 of #NamasteStrong Yoga Challenge

This week has been full of surprises and some not so much surprises. This top post is of the first 5 days of the challenge.

Day 17 was baby crow. This I had a feeling I could do and was successful. But for this one I had fun trying out the app Prisma and made a more artistic picture on Instagram. Day 18 I took the kids up to the park and while they were playing I was trying to do flying Crow pose. I worked up quite a sweat and had to try this many times before I got to holding it up for three seconds. Need to work more on this one. Day 19 was a very humbling experience. I knew I probably would not be able to do that pose which is baby Firefly because in a previous post we had to do regular Firefly and I fell on my butt every time and was not very successful. This one I couldn't do it all. I found that my forearms would barely skim the ground and wasn't able to lift my body up into the pose mostly in part due to tight hamstrings and not strong enough for.

But on day 20 I was able to bounce back and do a tripod headstand. I have done them before and knew this one I could get in easily and hold the pose for a long time. It helps to do it outside because it doesn't hurt my head because the ground is soft.

Day 21 was the Flying splits. I had never done this post before but I followed the instructions that one of the hosts gave. She said that she gets into the pose differently than most people do. I am not sure how other people get into the post but I found these instructions relatively easy to follow and was successful. My only limitation is my tight hamstrings which prevent my legs from getting fully straight.

Days 10-16 of #NamasteStrong Yoga Challenge

Wow what a week this has been. Such a combination of poses that are relatively easy for me to do and one that I completely failed on. And one post that I had no idea that I could even do which is the flying lizard pose and is the top right picture and the top collage.

 Here we have the elevated Lotus pose which I have done before but isn't very easy for me and I can't get my legs up too high. And then the other post was something I have never tried before and will have to continue to work on but at least this is a start.

And finally here is suppose I just couldn't do it is called Firefly pose. I think there is a lot more work that I am going to have to do to get into this one. They can't all be easy and it wouldn't be called a yoga practice if you didn't have to practice some things.