having an instructor or personal trainer is a beautiful thing when it comes to exercise. they push you when you need pushing, correct you when you need correcting, and force you to do what you need to do, not what you want to do. unfortunately, not everybody can afford a personal trainer, or even just to take classes.

take me, for instance.

i started out taking Yoga classes at the Y… but $90 a month for 1 Yoga class a week and not much else was just not worth it. we are saving our money right now to get ourselves out of debt, so i am officially my own personal trainer and instructor. i push myself when i think i need pushing, and i correct myself when i think i need correcting.

but how do i know when i need correcting?

well, i don’t.

up until last week, i thought i was doing it properly. i’d go through my chosen Sun Salutation every time i finished my cardio, and i felt a sense of satisfaction at having stretched out and worked my muscles.

the other day, i finished the p90x cardio dvd, turned the tv off, put on the radio, and began my Vinyasa.

as i was settling into my Warrior II pose, i caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection in the television set. it was atrocious. my legs weren’t nearly far enough apart, the neat right angle i thought my front leg was in was borderline straight, and i needed to bring my seat much closet to the ground. i adjusted until i looked correct, but it hurt. i was stretching muscles that i’d never stretch before because i hadn’t been doing it right.

i was devastated. i know you may think i’m exaggerating a little bit, but it really did have a huge impact on me. i thought i was doing so well. i thought i would be able to walk into an actual Yoga class (once we get ourselves out of debt and can budget for it again) and be proud of how far i’d come all by myself.

not so much.

that day, i learned that one very important piece of equipment in the home workout room, is a mirror. if you can swing getting a mirror to put in the area where you normally do your exercises, i highly suggest it. it will let you know if you need to straighten your arms more, deepen your stance, or raise your legs just a tad more. it will let you know if you’re bending too far or too little. most importantly- it gives you that third person perspective that you’re missing by not having an outside instructor. you can have the most expensive yoga mats, blocks and weights that money can buy, but if you’re doing the moves wrong and don’t even realize it- you aren’t going to go nearly as far as you could.

at the moment i can’t install a mirror anywhere in my house. we’re renting with the hopes to buy soon, but until we actually have a home we own i won’t be putting in something as large as a mirror. once we own a home, i’ll install some sort of mirror system in our workout area, even if i have to buy a bunch of cheap vanity mirrors and glue them to the wall like a bunch of puzzle pieces.

i feel like i’m starting all over again at beginner’s yoga, and it kind of sucks.

i’ve had the neatly wrapped box of P90X gathering dust for quite some time now. i’ve heard really good things about the program- from real people, not just on TV. they all say the same thing… it’s hard, but if you can get through it, you will see some amazing results. however, i don’t particularly want to kill myself for the next 90 days. sure, i want a better body, but i just don’t have the drive to do it their way.

abrupt change of subject whose relevance won’t be immediately obvious.

both my children have been sick, and my daughter has been sick for the past 3 weeks now. she’s getting better, albeit slowly, but it’s caused me to miss my last Yoga class at the Y. i will be missing tomorrow’s class as well, which saddens me. my daughter is getting better, but she’s still not better enough to fun around with other germ bearing toddlers. after another recent development, we might soon be putting our Y membership on hold, and that will completely quash my Yoga classes, sick kids or not.

thus begins the search for a good home Yoga program.

personally, i prefer a live class to a home program. with an instructor watching my every move, she/he can correct me where i’m wrong and can make small adjustments to my poses that i may not even realize are slightly off. the benefits of paying for a live class far outweigh being able to do Yoga comfortably in my pajamas at home. sometimes, however, a class just isn’t possible. there is a new Yoga studio in my town that i’d love to visit… but with the fees and no child care, it’s not even in the realm of possible.

the way i see it, a live class should be taken when possible, but a home DVD is better than nothing.

i’d been recording Namaste Yoga on the FitTV channel, but they stopped airing it. for some reason my DVR decided to push my shows off, so i no longer have that program at my fingertips. i’ve begun recording another Yoga program, but they’re only 30 minutes long and with commercials to boot.

trying to relax into a difficult Yoga pose while pressing the FF button just doesn’t do it for me.

when my husband said that our p90x program had a Power Yoga DVD, i was immediately up for it. i didn’t know quite what to expect… so far i had only done Yoga poses that were put together by strictly Yoga instructors.

the DVD is about 1 hr 30 min long, and it is intense. i like the way he put it together. you start out hard, with the difficult strength poses, moving into stretching and balancing. by the time you get done with the strength poses the balancing stuff is cake. i haven’t done the last 20 minutes of the DVD (i was unavoidably interrupted) but i think that this may be the DVD for me right now. i can’t quite afford the [very] expensive Namaste Yoga DVD series, (only available on their website) so i think that if i start saving up now, by the time i master the p90x moves, i’ll have enough petty cash for Namaste.

my conclusion on the p90x Yoga program? definite WIN. he moved a little quickly through the poses for my taste, but there’s still an hour and a half worth of poses, so it’s not like i’m losing out on training by going a little quicker than usual through the poses. i’ll definitely be keeping up with this dvd.

today, i missed my 4th Yoga class. that makes me sad, because Yoga is the one thing i get to every week that is just for me. even my bedtime is always interrupted by baby cries or a child’s questions, but Yoga class is just for me. someone else is watching the kids, and for 1 hour and 20 minutes, i can set aside my worries about the lunch menu and the housecleaning and concentrate on centering myself. unfortunately, when my children get sick i can’t put them in someone else’s hands to watch, so i have to stay at home with them. to compensate for not going to class i rode my bike. (i usually don’t do cardio on Yoga days) i might try a few poses after the kid’s bedtime, but it just isn’t the same with the hum of the baby monitor in the background, and actually having to think about what i am going to do next rather than be told.

things have been all around pretty bad lately for nearly everybody i know. (if you missed the post on my personal blog, go HERE) i know that things can’t always be perfect, but lately everything seems to be crashing and burning. i am hoping that today will mark the end of that period.

in an attempt for some positive change in the house, i’ve rearranged some furniture and cabinets to make life a little easier and less cluttered. those i have control over, so even if nothing else good comes out of the day, at least my tupperware is a little easier to access, right?

there are also other, smaller, things that happened today to make my day just a little sweeter… and they’re things that i have absolutely no control over. isn’t it wonderful when unexpected positive things happen?

my Proactiv arrived in the mail today, so i can hopefully begin to finally get my acne under control. i’ll let you know how that goes at a later date.

also in the mail was my first issue of Yoga Journal.

throughout my life i’ve gone through many magazine subscriptions. i’ve done Teen, Glamour, Martha Stewart, and various family/cooking oriented magazines. i’ve also received a few women’s health magazines, but the subscriptions never seem to stick. i just lose interest in them when most of the articles don’t pertain to my life or they start repeating themselves. there are only so many decorative paper centerpieces i am willing to make, or cute holiday cupcakes i want to bake. i spotted this magazine for the first time on a rack at the grocery store, and nabbed a subscription card. (i know, bad Nobody!)

it came in the mail today, and i cracked open my first issue as i was in line with the other SUVs and momhicles waiting on their children to be dismissed from school. as i did in my first Yoga class, i knew this magazine was for me. right now they’re hosting a Yoga Blog contest. i know! i’m pretty confident i won’t be chosen, but still. anybody who respects blogging is good in my book.

also, one of the first articles in the issue i was reading was about a woman who struggled with food her entire life. when she started Yoga, her life changed… slowly, she began to eat better and feel better about herself. the article was inspiring, and i hope that someday i will be able to write my own version of a complete life turnaround.

i haven’t gotten through very much of the magazine yet, (duty calls, children first!) but i have a feeling that this is the beginning of a very beautiful relationship.