Oh My Gosh

This is another number that really gets me going at functional fitness, and last night, I needed all the help I could get. Starting to feel a cold coming on while still at work, I debated skipping the class but knew I wouldn't have another opportunity until Friday and decided to go anyway. Biking there from the office, my legs felt weak and again I questioned the wisdom of the decision. Usher to the rescue:

Oh myy
Oh myy gosh

Baby let me love you downnn
There's so many ways to love ya
Baby I can break you downnn
There's so many ways to love ya...

Yep, and there's a lot of ways to love me too. Two weeks in a row on Tuesdays, I've been to yoga in the morning and functional fitness in the evening. And the juxtaposition of the two are really fascinating to me. Yoga and fitness, though they can both help you arrive in a place you want to be, have very different philosophies. When practicing yoga, we emphasize compassion for and acceptance of ourselves; in a fitness class, we're unabashedly there because we want something about ourselves to be different, and the instructor does too -- that's her job, and her mindset.

So when, this past Sunday at a yoga class, I was having a difficult time with Warrior III and decided to work with an easier modification of the pose, the teacher made a point to say: "Really nice Sarah." Contrast that with my experience last night in my fitness class, when, feeling weaker than normal, I started to do the lower impact version of the exercise she'd given us, and she came over and said "Oh come on Sarah, you can do donkey kicks!" And she's right, I could. Whether it was the best thing for me at that particular time, I'm not sure, but I know that I felt great at the end of that class, and I think if I can manage to take a little bit from both philosophies, I'm going to be feeling fit way beyond the realm of the physical.