This is part of a 28-Day Yoga Challenge to follow the guidelines of Mandy Ingber’s new book, Yogalosophy, before I review the book on the Where Is My Guru radio show on May 17th.

Hey, guys, I just finished recording the WIMG show LIVE for the first time, talking about Yogalosophy! Come listen to Jess, Jenn, and the other fabulous guests here. The theme for today’s show was showing up for yourself, which I think is wonderful. I loved the 5 As that Jess mentioned today from listener Josh Becker, including attention, acceptance, and affection, appreciation, and allowance. This whole project has been a month-long exercise in showing up through those principles in various ways and I’m really stoked that you’ve all expressed such enthusiasm for the book. It’s been fun! Today and tomorrow are my last official Yogalosophy days, so this is my sum-it-all-up post.

Yogalosophy by the numbers:

Starting weight: 144 lbs.
Final weigh-in: 138 lbs.

I just whipped out a tape measure to get my body measurements, too, which confirmed my “Yogalosophy leg lifts will work your butt like crazy” theory. The last time I did this, months ago, I could have sworn that my measurements were 38-31-42, but I didn’t write them down. I had no idea I’d be blogging about this stuff! Post-Yogalosophy measurements: 37-30-39.  Mandy wasn’t kidding when she jokes in her DVD that her mantra is “I have a great butt.”

This is part of a 28-Day Yoga Challenge to follow the guidelines of Mandy Ingber’s new book, Yogalosophy, before I review the book on the Where Is My Guru radio show on May 17th.

I love today’s Yogalosophy prompt–to work on meditation during your day and add meditation to your regular yoga poses.

“Most of our thoughts tend to be repetitive and can be categorized as follows: worrying about the past, planning for the future, listing, and worrying. A very basic form of meditation is to notice what type of thinking you are doing and simply label it…Watch the thoughts float by like clouds.”-Mandy Ingber

This is part of a 28-Day Yoga Challenge to follow the guidelines of Mandy Ingber’s new book, Yogalosophy, before I review the book on the Where Is My Guru radio show on May 17th.

Have you ever seen the movie Strictly Ballroom? It’s the debut film of one of my favorite directors, Baz Luhrmann, who also directed Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge! I love his films because they are so unabashedly fun and over-the-top. Gorgeous costumes, fabulous soundtracks, swooning romance.  I’m looking forward to seeing his new film, The Great Gatsby, soon. Having re-watched Strictly Ballroom last night, I realized there were some funny parallels between the film’s plot and my Yogalosophy prompts for yesterday and today. You see, the film’s protagonist, Scott, is a young Australian ballroom dancer desperate to dance his own “non-federation” steps. His inventiveness gets him in trouble with the ballroom dancing federation–they declare that there will be no “new steps” added to a big competition. Meanwhile, my Yogalosophy prompt for Day 22 involved the exact opposite. Yesterday’s theme was invention and the daily plan involved creating your own pose sequence. How cool is that? Very new steps. It got me thinking about some other serious issues that are relevant to my Yogalosophy project.

Paradoxically, the great and sometimes unfortunate thing about yoga is that there is no “federation approved” version of yoga. Carol Horton’s Yoga PhD is all about the incongruities of modern yoga culture. What do I mean by incongruities? People can invent all kinds of yoga, which makes the practice open and innovative in certain interesting ways, but also potentially contributes to some  valid criticisms of yoga as too commercial, exploitative, or overly focused on the physical body or getting a “yoga butt,” rather than emotional growth. I feel rather torn about this issue. On one hand, I hate the idea that yoga could be used to make people feel bad about their bodies. That’s just wrong, in my opinion.  Yoga should challenge you without tearing you apart or making you feel terrible. And God knows, we have enough of that in life off the mat.

But, perhaps paradoxically, I do support people using yoga as a tool, if it helps them to be healthier and stronger. That’s part of the reason I decided to do this project, truthfully. I thought it might make me healthier and stronger, without neglecting my emotional growth. Has it worked? I certainly feel physically more stable and stronger and I enjoy many of the benefits of daily exercise and many of the prompts and activities within the book. However, I’m still working on determining my personal boundary line for healthy eating behaviors and overly restrictive ones, post-project. How do I want to eat after Friday’s show? I don’t miss Diet Coke and French fries, honestly, but I do want to be able to go to restaurants without worrying about (cue ominous music) guerilla butter sneaking into my food.

So much of modern culture deals with food using moral language that it complicates eating, I think. In what other culture is there “Death by Chocolate Cake,” to cite one just example? I want to find some moderate middle-zone on diet that I can follow reasonably and avoid slipping into the “good vs. bad” thinking on food that permeates most of our culture, which is perhaps the most difficult challenge of all. For example, I’ve talked about overly restrictive behavior before in this post on orthorexia from last year. Is it smart to worry about additives in our food or eat more vegetables? I think the answer is a clear yes. But can a focus on “clean” food get a little obsessive? Again, a clear yes.  It’s one of those incongruities I’ve yet to resolve personally. I am looking forward to a new book from Melanie Klein and Anna Guest-Jelley on yoga and body image next year. I’m hoping that will prompt a wider discussion of these issues in yoga culture. In the meantime, it’s my job to figure out what my new steps will be.

This is part of a 28-Day Yoga Challenge to follow the guidelines of Mandy Ingber’s new book, Yogalosophy, before I review the book on the Where Is My Guru radio show on May 17th.

So, the Where is My Guru review of Yogalosophy will happen on Friday. So excited to get to talk to everyone about the book. I’ve already earmarked a journaling exercise as one of my favorites. I’ll definitely be talking about that and other cool Yogalosophy activities with Jess next week.

Yesterday was a rest day, so I did some of Mandy’s recommended back stretches, plus the home practice sequence in my new issue of Yoga Journal. All good stuff. Then, I made a mistake that I’m paying for today. My friend Becky over at 450 Good Choices posted a hilarious arm exercise video from another celeb trainer famous for her work with celebrities and joked about doing them in public (you should really be reading their website, if you’re not!). So, I decided I would try out those easy-yet-crazy looking arm exercises. Possibly I was inspired by reading a funny NYMag article that described them this way:

“It’s difficult, actually. Essentially you hold tiny weights in your hand and then flap your arms wildly like a person in a Victorian insane asylum having an epileptic fit. You do this for an hour. At the end, I was so tired I lay on the floor.”

Well, I flapped my arms about, sans weights, like a resident of Bellevue last night (for much less than an hour, too) and woke up feeling all wrong in the morning. My shoulders hurt today, and not in that wow, tough workout way, but more in a that arm-flapping is bad for your shoulders style. I feel like such a goober. So, I am sticking with my Yogalosophy routine, y’all. It seems much safer, based entirely on using myself as an experimental celebrity workout guinea pig. Your mileage may vary, but I have to say that I’ve been doing tons of yoga poses and elliptical work and this is the first day that my shoulders felt tweaky in a not-good way. Ouch!

Today, I am going with the Yogalosophy prompt of setting your own intentions by being more careful. It was an excellent lesson to learn! It cements my feelings about modifying exercises as needed, like Mandy is doing below with Boat pose.

This is part of a 28-Day Yoga Challenge to follow the guidelines of Mandy Ingber’s new book, Yogalosophy, before I review the book on the Where Is My Guru radio show on May 17th.

This is part of a 28-Day Yoga Challenge to follow the guidelines of Mandy Ingber’s new book, Yogalosophy, before I review the book on the Where Is My Guru radio show on May 17th.

Since  Jessica of Where is My Guru is sharing some of my blog posts on our FB page, I’ve got friends calling dibs on borrowing the book next! That’s pretty sweet. I can say that the project is tough, but rewarding. Despite yoga’s “girly” rep, Mandy’s routines really work your muscles. Check out this new feature that Mandy Ingber is doing with People Magazine. 28 days of Yogalosophy tips!

What would my tips & tricks be?

If you are totally new to yoga, I’d start the program with your own personal Yogalosophy kit: get the book, a comfy yoga mat, and a journal to record your thoughts, goals, and gratitude list. If you can swing it, I might buy Mandy’s Yogalosophy DVD, too.  You don’t need the DVD to use the book successfully, but if you are a visual person like I am, you may find the poses easier to visualize and follow on video initially. They really complement one another–and all of these tools are still cheaper than a gym membership or pricey yoga pants (I tend to exercise in old t-shirts and shorts, anyway. I’m so not one of those lululemon worshippers who spends $100 on one pair of pants. That seems insane). I did get a really cute new mat for Christmas, though. Zebra stripes & from Target!

This is part of a 28-Day Yoga Challenge to follow the guidelines of Mandy Ingber’s new book, Yogalosophy, before I review the book on the Where Is My Guru radio show on May 17th.

Today, I had a breakthrough: I actually completed the ‘Fully Loaded Challenge’ on Mandy’s Yogalosophy DVD! I had attempted it before and chickened out, sticking with the shorter Express sequence on the DVD, which doesn’t have Sun Salutations. Y’all know Sun Salutations scare me. But since they were required on the Yogalosophy plan for today, I decided to crack open the DVD and try them again (the DVD and book sequences overlap). Day 15′s plan called for cardio exercise and the Fully Loaded Challenge. As Mandy says in the book, this point in the routine calls for pushing forward to get stronger.

And I did the Sun Salutations! Plus, tree pose! And my balance is getting better and better–I’m more able to do standing poses without using a chair for balancing help and modification. How cool is that? I can honestly say I’m less wobbly and haven’t tripped or fallen in the last week, which is major for me. Really, I fall all the time! But since I started exercising daily for this project, I’ve become much more stable.

To add icing on the cake of increased fitness, I hopped on my scale again and weighed 138 lbs. That means I’ve lost 6 lbs total. For a minute, I seriously thought the scale was lying to me! So, I weighed again, and it still said 138 lbs. I’d been avoiding weighing because I thought it might make me too invested in minor fluctuations or be misled by water weight changes, but I’m glad I tried tonight.

My gratitude list for Day 15:
1. Making it to this point without totally quitting!
2. Getting to teach a class in the fall
3. Puppy snuggles
4. I’m supposed to get a new book in the mail tomorrow
5. Discovering Bryan Ferry’s Jazz Age album

This is part of a 28-Day Yoga Challenge to follow the guidelines of Mandy Ingber’s new book, Yogalosophy, before I review the book on the Where Is My Guru radio show on May 17th.

I can’t believe I’ve reached the halfway point of my Yogalosophy mind-body makeover! Today’s theme was cultivating the gracefulness of a dancer. Mandy suggests thinking like a ballerina when you do your yoga poses. I tried my best to think about alignment and poise, rather than huffing and puffing. It reminded me that I had this odd little book of ballet exercises, too. I pulled it out and added a few of the ballet stretches to my Yogalosophy and cardio routine.

I realized tonight that my endurance has improved so much over the last two weeks. The first week was really tough and challenging, but I’m really enjoying my daily exercise now. I said something about going to exercise and someone accused me of being an “exercise junkie” today! Isn’t that hilarious? I’m contemplating putting it on business cards: “Hope Bordeaux, Book Guru & Exercise Junkie.” What do you think?

Here’s the little ballet book and my much-read copy of Yogalosophy on my nightstand.