Yoga Thursday - Pre-emptive relaxation

[just_ann_now]

I'm expecting a particularly hectic day today, so I made a pre-emptive strike against it by doing an extra-long, particularly mellowing workout this morning. It's not a commercially available dvd, unfortunately, but one which my yoga teacher (college-level course for academic credit) made available to us. There's a very strong focus on breathwork, meditation, and warmup - the first sun salutation isn't even until around thirty minutes in. Two versions of sun salutations, forward and back bends, spinal twists, inversions, a blissful guided relaxation, and closing meditation. Everything done very slowly and carefully. My body feels like happily melted goo right now!

And I don't really know if it's physical or psychological, but I do seem able to maintain the mellowness longer throughout the day once I've done this. I very seldom have to resort to something like deep breathing to relieve momentary stress (I'm in high-volume customer service) but it feels like a have a secret reserve of mellow that I'm able to draw on after doing this. My secret weapon.