Thing #10 Video at Home Again. And Again.

That’s right. I have thrice used my television and Comcast DVR to record and do workout programs – twice since I last wrote about it.

First, I did the Namaste Yoga show again. I liked it, but shamefully I think I like it because it isn’t all that hard. Or, at least, doing it myself in the privacy of my living room means I don’t push it all that much. Regardless, I like it on a morning when I have a 7:30 meeting and can’t both get enough sleep and wake up in time to go to the gym, but dread the way I’ll feel if I don’t do *something*. The woman’s voice is soothing. So soothing, in fact, that I barely get irritated when she veers away from telling me how to do the new position and starts telling me that my breath is the foundation of everything I do. Or mysterious things about the air and my spirit. Lady, I do not know what that means for my everyday living. But I do like your complacent confidence in my capacity to maintain crane.


Second, I did a one-two punch combo of a stretching show and, of all things, a bellydancing show. I had recorded a bunch of different options, and these were the fresh ones I could do given the equipment I have added to the reality of having a downstairs neighbor who probably doesn’t want me thumping on her ceiling at five in the morning.

The stretching was sort of like yoga, but more… prosaic. Cathe the Stretch Max instructor was in a fitness room studio setting with a bunch of ladies in matching-eqsue outfits (like when Destiny’s Child or The Supremes wear outfits from the same materials but in different designs. Like that). With yoga the ladies are in nature somewhere, or dimly lit wood-floored rooms in nice but non-matching-esque outfits. I liked the stretches a lot – they woke me up, and seemed to target some muscles I use for running in a way that yoga hasn’t yet.

I don’t even know what to say about the belly-dancing. Even in my very own be-shaded living room I felt a little like a jackass, but also a little like a twelve-year-old girl trying on a secreted lipstick and nylons. Also a little curious-yet-uncomfortable about the intense Westernization and assimilation of this centuries old North African dance form. I mean, the show is called “Shimmy”.

Final analysis, though, is that these are a good option for me on light workout days, or days when the gym or an outdoor run aren’t an option. Or, frankly, when I want to do twenty minutes of easy yoga.