Yoga with Adriene, EMPOWER week 1 recap! (and some other things)

Tonight wrapped up day 8 of the Yoga with Adriene EMPOWER challenge. Every day has been both a pleasure and a challenge as well as a learning experience. I feel like using bullet points tonight, so I'm going to hit the highs (and the lows) with some little dashes:

• I can do EMPOWER. I was terrified that I was going to fail. That because I am new to yoga it was going to be too much for me, too complicated, too difficult and I would either give up (as I've been known to do when things get tough) or injure myself pushing too hard. None of these things happened. I did it. I'm doing it.
• I intensely dislike having my feet off of the ground. I am a million miles away from being able to do a headstand or a handstand, and I'm okay with that.
• Some days my body says no. There are days when I wake up and my body is so tired, I crawl to the mat with my tail between my legs and do bedtime yoga instead of an empower video. The way I see it, at least I'm getting to the mat.
• Downward facing dog has become my favorite. It still isn't perfect (I have a little photo for you in a moment) but I love love love working on this pose.
• I cannot stay in Savasana for more than two minutes. I love to relax - read in bed, watch tv, crochet, do absolutely nothing, but corpse pose eludes me.
• I can almost do a full Chaturanga sequence, down dog > plank > lower to up dog > and I can finally aaaaaalmost roll on my toes back to plank and down dog the way Adriene does, woohoo!

So, 8 days are done, 22 more to go and I am very excited to continue on this yoga journey! Also, shout out to all the awesome folks in the facebook Kula! You are all so wonderful and supportive! My Oma was in the hospital this week and there was one day that I was feeling so overwhelmed and pressured, near to tears at the thought of even getting on the mat and when I posted about it the response was incredible! I was moved to tears at the love that flowed towards me and encouraged me to stay strong and find what feels good. Just finding a community of people from all over the world who are so positive and caring has been worth every tough moment of this challenge.

One other exciting thing - we are getting KITTENS! They are 5 weeks old now and will be coming home with us in a couple of weeks! Losing Spark was difficult and I didn't think that I would be ready this soon, but we find ourselves missing having a cat around and a great opportunity to give these girls a home came up! We went to see them today and I took some pictures! They are phone quality and a bit blurry since they wouldn't hold still, but here is a looksie!

This little gal ^ is the one I picked out. I've decided that in true overly dedicated-fan fashion I'm going to name her Sookie. I cannot wait to walk into the room, look at her, get all serious and say "Sookie." I genuinely hope that someone else gets this reference. It will either crack me up every time or get old very fast. I'm leaning towards hilarity.

As soon as they come home with us I will whip out the big guns camera and snap some better pictures of them! Maybe even some video if I'm feeling radical. (Speaking of video, videoing myself doing yoga has been insanely helpful in adjusting my poses, since I have no instructor or mirrors to help me do them correctly)

Anyway my friends, I am itching to get to my book (Lisey's Story by Stephen King) and relax with a beer! I hope that everyone has had a beautiful week...namaste!