Back in November I wrote about how I was actively thinking about doing yoga regularly. I’d bought a Non-Sucky Yoga DVD and was trying to figure out how it was going to fit into my life. At that time this is what I said needed to happen for me to actually do yoga, rather than just think about it:

I consider this actively moving towards beginning a yoga practice. Issues I need to sort out to actually do it: Which exercises are the best for me to start with? What time of day is best? How to cycle through different series with different goals? What I should wear? And whether I have suitable props to assist with poses that I might need help with?

Here I am not even 6 months later and yoga seems to be a regular part of my daily routine. Here’s how it seems to be working:

Which exercises?

I’ve been alternating between the Spine Series and the Infant Series on the Paul Grilley Yin Yoga DVD.

Most of the poses are easy enough even for a beginner. He explains things really well and gives options. Now that I’ve been doing it for a while, I use the alternate audio option so I don’t get all that explanation and have some calming music instead. But in the beginning the talk is really helpful. And his voice is quite soothing.

I don’t do anything he describes as “climactic”. This is clearly code for “only Gumby can do this”. It took me a while to figure out how to adapt but here are my current adaptations. They might not make sense unless you have the DVD and have tried both series, but if you decide to try this, you could come back and see how I’ve done it.

The Infant Series: Snail pose is impossible. And I find Cat-tail difficult and uncomfortable. For a while, I would just stop when they started snail pose. This makes it shorter (about 30 minutes) and is a good option to begin with.

Now, I skip that middle bit. There is a fast-forward button on the remote for a reason. I figured out that between the forward bends and the back bends he puts in a twist. There is a good twist before snail post — Twisted Roots — so I fast-forward while I’m resting after Twisted Roots and start the DVD playing again while they are resting after Cat-tail. Then I finish the whole sequence.

This series is a good combination of long stretches that unkink your back and some wake-you up movement near the end.

The Spine Series: This one is more yin (watch DVD1: Theory for an explanation). So great for getting your back really stretched out. It has that Snail pose in the middle though with a Cat-tail following as the transitional twisting movement.

For this one, I add in Twisted Roots and start it when they start Snail. I position myself so I can see the clock on the DVD player and hold Twister Roots for 5 minutes on each side with about a 2 minute rest in between. This takes me to about when they are done Cat-Tail. I fast-forward a bit if it doesn’t come out quite right.

The third back bend (Saddle pose) is also “climactic”. I used to just turn off the DVD off at that point, but now I substitute Camel pose (which is in the Infant Series) and it seems to be hitting the same sorts of muscles and the same kind of back bend.

The PDFs that come with the DVD, if you buy them from Havi, have some other ideas for adaptations. Havi’s a proper yoga teacher and everything and skips Snail pose, btw. She says she also often does just the first part of the Infant Series, stopping when they get to Snail, and just sitting for 5 minutes to end.

What time of day?

I’ve been doing this in the morning. I tried before breakfast but there were too many days when I felt a bit woozy. So now I get up, brush my teeth, eat breakfast, and then do yoga. Then I shower and get dressed. It seems to be working well.

How to combine different series?

I’ve been sort of alternating between the Spine Series and the Infant Series. Until recently, I also do an aqua-fit class one day a week and a women on weights class one day a week.

That is changing because of the move, but I plan to get the trainer from the weights class to help me with a routine I can do at home. So I’m going to try to do a weights workout a couple of days a week and yoga the other days. I figure that variety is probably good.

What should I wear?

This kind of connects to when I do it.  Pyjamas. Works great for me.

Obviously if you are doing yoga out of the house with other people, you would need a different solution. But alone in the living room? Pyjamas.

Do I have the props I need?

Last November, I think I was thinking of the kind of stuff Paul uses in the Non-Sucky Yoga DVD (the Spine Series, in particular) for things like Snail pose and Saddle pose. Not doing them clearly eliminates that problem.

What I discovered was that the ligaments in the backs of my legs are kind of short. So I find forward bends a lot easier if my legs aren’t completely straight. A rolled up towel under my knees has been a good addition to the Spine Series practice. And to begin with a couple of throw cushions from the sofa under my knees in Butterfly helped, too.

I think that if/when I start trying Cat-Tail again, I will have a scarf or something handy because I can’t always grab that foot I’m supposed to grab.

DVD vs. Class

While I understand the value in going to a yoga studio and having a teacher who can help me, I don’t want to pay for another fitness class. And I’m moving to the country which is going to limit my options and involve driving.

Furthermore, to do a 1 hour class at a studio, I’d have to add on travel time, and buy something suitable to wear. A class is working well for Mat, who likes to write first thing in the morning and finds a noon-hour class breaks up his day nicely. But the choice for me was the DVD or nothing.

The extra stuff that Havi packaged with the DVD in her Non-Sucky Yoga promotion is really helpful. As with any information product, no one is going to use all of it. For example, I’m not keen on the mp3 but I know other people love it.  The key thing is that she gives you permission not be all bendy like the models in the DVD. And explains what’s really hard, even for experienced people. And help address your own stuckness around the practice. When you compare the price to taking a class, it’s more than reasonable.

Overall

I really like doing yoga  most mornings. I still don’t do it when I travel, which is probably silly because travelling gets me more stiff and cranky than being home. But when I travel I also tend to have stuff to do earlier in the morning. I’m not going to get up at 6 a.m. to do yoga!

In addition to generally feeling less stiff and kind of scrunched up, it is also quite calming. I’m not great at meditation so my mind wanders all over the place while I’m doing it, but I think it is calmer than it might otherwise be. I don’t purposefully think. I just let thoughts wander in and out.

And I’ve noticed a difference in how far I can bend already. I’m convinced by the points Paul makes in the Theory DVD, which is interesting in itself.I’m seriously tempted to get his Anatomy for Yoga DVD. Heck, it might even qualify as a homeschooling science resource

I really should post more here. So today one of those numbered lists of random things going on.

1. This is my busy work season. Was in Windsor last week. Antigonish next week. Kingston in a couple of weeks time. I love the work but the travel is tiring.
2. I had an epiphany about how the new business model could work, though. So I am now more confident about that. There might always be a place for the spring travelling though, if universities continue to have a budget for it.
3. The house thing is getting closer. We’ve been finishing up unfinished jobs around the house like painting the corner of the kitchen near my desk and putting some splashback tiles along the kitchen counter.
4. The movers are booked. As are a whole bunch of other things. Mat is handling most of this (see 1. above). Boxes will be delivered soon, I think, and we can start packing.
5. I think we also need to start throwing/giving things away.
6. Freya is doing lots including teaching French to her friend. She’s being paid for that, which I think makes her take it more seriously. I think it is an excellent way to get her to do some French.
7. I’ve been knitting. And finishing things. The vest and top that I blogged about here. The latter had short sleeves in the pattern but a friend indicated they were badly designed and bunched under the arms. As I finished the body & collar I thought it would look really cute sleeveless. I did an inch of ribbing and it does. We even had suitable buttons in the button jar.
8. I’ve decided to join Twitter. And I like it. It is a time suck but a delightful one. At first it felt a bit like having invited a bunch of different groups of friends to the same party. Really weird. But that feeling seems to have gone away. Partly because I use TweetDeck and can organize them into columns. And partly because people from different parts of my online life seem to have things in common.
9. My birthday is next week. The one like the 7″ records. And if you are close to that age, you’ll actually know what I’m talking about there. I’m having breakfast with a new online friend before catching my plane back home. Not sure what I’m doing when I get here. Mat will be in Germany. A friend says we’ll come up with something. Order pizza and drink beer might be the default (though must ensure there is wine as friend doesn’t drink beer).
10. My sister is seriously considering moving to Ottawa. This might be really nice. I only met her when I was 16 and she currently lives in Alberta so we mostly keep in touch by e-mail. I met her husband and son for the first time Easter weekend and we got along well. My nephew has a wicked sense of humour (he’s graduating from high school this summer).

Okay, that’s enough to keep you going. I’m going to have to think about what this blog is for. But I suspect there will be lots of farming posts come June.

I’m avoiding doing a bunch of organizing of my business by thinking about meta-organizing. You know, things like what kind of binders I need to put a business manual in. Or categories for filing.

And one of the big things I have to do is create a new financial tracking system. I had a lot of angst about this a month or so ago. And then just stopped doing anything other than filing business expenses in my filing cabinet. Which is all well and good while I have ONE business. But in June I will have 3: my business, renting this house, a farm. I need spreadsheets.

Nimble computing?

So today, I’m procrastinating about creating spreadsheets by wondering whether I should become MS Office free.

I’ve already downloaded Open Office. Mostly because it can export word processing documents to PDF without losing things like hyper-links. I needed that when I did my e-book.

Lisa Firke has had an interesting series of post about moving to a more nimble set-up. Her motivation is coveting a MacBook Air. But I think there are some important things about the project in general.

Like me, Lisa is a Mac user. She’s probably achieved geek level 10 or something, though, and knows a lot more about these things. (She designs websites for a living.) But she’s talking about using iWork instead of Office.

Considering iWork

So I poked around in my applications folder and there it is. As soon as I open it, it tells me there is a new version, but what the heck. So I’m looking at it. And it seems like it’ll save documents as PDF (with hyperlinks intact, and hyperlinks for TOC entries), which is important.

Looks like it’ll also export to Word format, which is handy for sharing documents in a world where MS Office is hegemonic. (I’m thinking you can figure out what hegemonic means from the context. Expand your vocabulary day!)

There doesn’t seem to be a spreadsheet app, but the tables in the word processing app (Pages) can use formulas. (Why do I instinctively use Latin plurals?) And it makes charts from tables.

I’m not an advanced Excel user by any means and my needs are pretty simple on the spreadsheet front. So maybe that works. And might even be easier to print out in useful ways. Excel is a PITA when it comes to printing stuff out.

Benefits of nimbleness

So, apart from a general tendency to resist hegemonic forces,  why go this route?  Lisa’s comments about the loss of hard drive space, processor speed etc in her laptop shift (she bought the Air) made me think about the fact that hardware upgrades are mostly about those things. I’d like to keep using the machine I have for as long as possible. Better for the environment as well as the budget.

I think I bought this machine in ‘06 (the version of iWork I have is ‘06). It is a desktop iMac, one of the ones with a flat screen with all the gubbins in the screen. Since I had my previous one from 1998, I think it’s got a good few years left in it.

So I’m thinking that if I get rid of stuff I don’t need, like duplicate word processing software, I’ve got more space for the stuff I use.

Living laptop free

My other thing is that I don’t have a laptop. And I don’t really want one. Another thing to carry around.

I have found that I rarely need one. I don’t travel much for work, and when I do I bring my presentation on a memory stick and ask the client to provide a machine hooked up to a projector. This avoids me working out how to get a Mac laptop to work on their system. It means everything is set up when I arrive. And there is usually a tech person onsite to deal with any issues.

My business trips aren’t that long. And I’m working with clients all day. Either I don’t check e-mail or I use the free computer at the hotel.

When we went to Europe we took laptops (Mat uses one as his main home machine; Tigger has his old one) but that kind of trip doesn’t happen that often.

With the move to the country, I’m wondering if I will want to do work away from home. And what kind. The library computers aren’t too busy in the middle of the day, so that might be an option. And we are planning on finally breaking down and getting cell-phones, so I’m wondering about a Blackberry or something.

One of my friends uses her Blackberry a lot for dealing with e-mail while waiting at piano lessons or whatever. I don’t feel that is a need right now, but when I’m driving further and doing more kid-stuff on those days, maybe. Or will I just schedule my time differently. Segregate bits of my life more?

Cloud computing

I’ve come across this term but don’t understand it very well. I am using a bunch of web apps for my business. And my new e-mail came with a file folder thingamy that lets me drop documents and retrieve them when I’m somewhere else.

This makes me think that I could make good use of library computers. Or a friend’s computer while kids are doing whatever.

Does this impact the decision about wordprocessing apps? Or does it just mean that I do some things at home and other things elsewhere?

Your thoughts

This feels pretty vague and unresolved for me. So any thoughts more than welcome. Mac apps you really like. Experiences with cloud computing. Open Office vs. iWork

Help me procrastinate about the spreadsheets!

Two grammar related blog posts found courtesy of Twitter today.

The first, a detailed indictment of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style in the Chronicle (in the free to all stuff). By a linguist. With details of a (presumably better) book about grammar at the bottom. At least one to check out, I think.

Geoffrey Pullam makes some sound arguments. But for those who are not familiar with the basic tenets of linguistics, it might seem odd. For linguists (and I agree with them) the whole point about a living language is that it is living. Thus the rules are only discernable by examining how people actually use the language to make meaning.

For me, the sociologist, I would say that this means that they are more social conventions than rules. Thus you can teach the social conventions, but those conventions also change. And some people defy those conventions and still communicate well and may even be lauded.

If you want to read more about linguistics and public debates about language, I highly recommend Deborah Cameron’s Verbal Hygiene. She demonstrates how some of the vociferous debates about language are really (or also) about other things — discipline, social cohesion, employment for copy writers, etc.

The second grammar post today is Three Grammar Rules You Can (And Should) Break. Directed at bloggers it takes on some of the big rules-that-are-really-social-conventions and gives you permission to treat them as you would asking your girlfriend’s father for permission to marry her.  Sometimes makes sense. But use your judgement.

I liked both. But then I’m not a big fan of rules or rule-following at the best of times. Hope you enjoy them.

So. I’ve been working on my new business direction. My big marketing opportunity is a conference at the end of May: the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences.

I am giving a presentation in the Career Corner series, “Managing Your Research Career”.

I’ve also booked a booth for the Book Fair.

Now I’m working on things to give to conference attendees. I’ve decided on a leaflet “From Conference Paper to Journal Article”. Useful content, relevant to most people, and fits on a leaflet sized thing.

I need visuals. Help!

A couple of people have read drafts and commented that the text is great. But one made a good point. It is text-heavy. Maybe a picture or a cartoon would break up the text.

I’ve found a cartoon I like, though I worry that the humour will not have widespread appeal (my lovely life-partner, who is an academic, didn’t get the joke though he did get the relevance). And that is making me nervous.  I’m also not sure I can really afford to pay the licensing fees on top of all the printing and booth registration this year.

I’ve been drawing a blank on a photograph. I found one that said “young English prof writing in bed and tearing her hair out in frustration” to me but when I sent it to a grad student friend he though it said “Philidelphia cream cheese”. I’m not sure why. Maybe he doesn’t know any good looking English profs.

In any case, most of the stock photos involve either beautiful people or suits, neither of which feel totally comfortable with my potential client base (not that some of them aren’t beautiful or even fashionable, though I think wearing a suit automatically disqualifies you as one of my Right People).

This morning, I had an idea.

How about a tasteful photograph of papers (like typed papers as you might present at a conference, maybe with editorial marks on them) and scholarly journals on a desk. Not my desk (too messy; and actually made of countertop) but a scholarly looking desk. I think black and white will work best.

Here’s where you come in

So I’m about to go searching all those sources, despite my fear that it will be in vain. But if anyone out there is a decent photographer (this is going to be a small picture) and has access to a decent desk, a scholarly paper (pref. without equations), and a journal or two (social sciences and humanities) and wants to take some shots, I would be eternally grateful. If you are in Ottawa, I could even round up the materials for a photoshoot.

Thanks.

I took these a week or so ago but delayed getting them off the camera because of Freya’s backlog of iCarly-like movies on there.

So both of these projects have advanced considerably since the photos were taken.

So this is the yarn for the vest. With a bit of the swatch. I tried to photograph this on the sofa but it is kind of camouflaged there. I now have both back and front done. Need to block (at least steam block), sew side seams and then make neck and armbands.

This is the BFL that I dyed with drink mix a while ago (grape & cherry). All the singles are now spun up. I put a lot of twist in so I get a pretty tightly spun plied yarn when I’m done. Not sure there is much there (though maybe toddler socks?) Need to decide on 2 or 3 ply. Feeling like quantity is inadequate for sampling but maybe that is what I need to do.

Madeleine Bunting on the “new atheist” debates. (In the Guardian.)

What many argue is that the New Atheist debate has ended up down an intellectual dead end; there are only so many times you can argue that religion is a load of baloney. … They see the New Atheists mirroring a particular strain of fundamentalist Christianity with no knowledge of the vast variety of other forms of religious faith. In common with their Christian opponents, they share “the inner glow of complete certainty” – as Wilson describes his atheist conversion.

My thoughts exactly. Bunting goes on to discuss a few thinkers who are offering more nuanced approaches to the issues. Interesting thoughts on the nature of belief. Worth a read. (HT: U of T press on Twitter)

Saw this video on Productive Flourishing (Somehow Charlie can get the video to actually show up on his site and I can only get a link but do click through. It is worth it.)

David Heinemeier Hansson – FOWA Dublin 2009 from Carsonified on Vimeo.

And it resonates a lot with what Lori is saying about Cheating Your Way to a Great Education.

If you are at work or have small children around (the kind who aren’t used to hearing swearing from time to time and thus might make a big deal of it; not like my child), you might want to use headphones. Or wait until the kids have gone to bed.

Actually, I got the haircut last week. Today, I went for a colour.

I took a few photos using PhotoBooth (I love my Mac). Draped a blanket over the room divider behind me so you don’t get distracted by my kitchen.

Kind of hard to see the colour. But I kind of like the quirky pensive look in this one. And taking photos with my reading glasses on (which totally coordinate with the new hair colour, btw) avoids the dark circles under the eyes problem. (Although they get worse when I’m tired they are there all the time.)

Me, no glasses (click there to see what I mean)

Hmmph. People have been ranting about Twitter. To be fair lots of calm “it’s great” has happened, too.

I’ve been resisting. Being old and grumpy. That kind of thing.

But the rant bugged me.

I still don’t know how this is going to work or if this is going to work for me but I decided that the only way to find out is to try.

So I’m on Twitter.

@jovanevery

That’s me. JoVE was taken, unsurprisingly. Damn Greek gods.