Yoga Night Finally Came!!!

Friday night the girls from my club volleyball team came over for yoga night! We sat down and ate habachi chicken with rice and vegetables. Some of the girls brought sweets. We went swimming and got in the hot tub.

Once we got out everyone got changed and we ate chocolate fondue. We relaxed for a little while and then changed into our yoga clothes. JLo looked more like the yoga instructor than I did with her matching sportsbra and yoga pants. We all sat down to do yoga in my theater at about 11pm. My volleyball team is so crazy so it was hard getting them all sitting down together to actually participate in the yoga. I started off with some simple stretches that they had all done before to get them loosened up. I have never seen a group of more unflexible girls.
We then went into the strengthening portion of yoga with extreme stretches and holding difficult poses. They were all screaming "This is so hard!" and "I can't do this!". It was hilarious!

After we had finished the stretching and strengthening we went into meditation. It was really difficult to keep everyone focused. I had them count backwards from 100 in unison with their breaths, but everyone kept giggling. They were all saying how "Our team has never been this quiet before". But once they were done they all said they felt energized and relaxed. Overall it was a success, even though my entire volleyball team has ADD.

Preparing for Yoga Night

About two weeks ago I sat down with Eric (my mentor) for about 30 minutes to prepare my agenda for my yoga night with the volleyball team. We came up with a fairly long list with each stretch being performed for approximately one minute. My agenda consisted of stretches such as:
*Neck and shoulder roll
*Toe touches standing up and sitting down
*Butterfly
*Front and side splits
*Back Bend
*Hurdle stretch with head pulled to knee
*Split sitting down with opposite hand touching toes
*Crane Stance
*Horse Stance
*Plank
*Holding push-up position
*Lying Leg
*Quad stretch
--and obviously--
Meditation

Wow...Lots of stretching

Over the past few weeks, I have been stretching more than I have ever stretched in my entire life. Doing yoga with my mentor requires a lot of stretching, but even outside of yoga I have been going the extra mile. Every day I have been stretching for the past week or so and I can feel a difference! For the first time in my entire life I can touch my toes. I went to volleyball practice and my coach told me that I was jumping higher! My running form at track has really improved also! I have been clearing the hurdles with much more ease. I feel faster and I feel like I have a much wider range of motion. It's like someone injected my muscles with energy!