Today, I’m doing Beachbody’s 3-Week Yoga Retreat video, titled “Balance.” The description of the video says “Find stability not just physically but mentally and emotionally, too. Challenge yourself with a series of different postures to help you develop better balance inside and out.” I’m excited for this one because balance is something I’d like to work on. I can be a little unstable at times. Also, I bought my kids longboards for their birthdays, and I’d like to learn to longboard too, so better balance is going to be very much needed for that.
Before 3-Week Yoga Retreat Day 3 – Balance: It’s 9 pm! The kids went up to mom’s while I was working today, so after work, I went to her house to have dinner with them all and then we visited for a while. So we got back home pretty late, but I’m still going to do yoga. I’m actually feeling good tonight and not really tired. Since I work from home, I don’t get out of the house a lot, so I think it was really good for me to get out for a bit and socialize. Definitely a much-needed refresher. Anyway, I’m ready to improve my balance!
WORKOUT TOOLS:
1. Yoga mat. Yoga is really, really difficult to do without a mat because it’s much harder to stabilize yourself and hold the poses without one. I learned this from doing PiYo in the past, so if you don’t have one, I really recommend getting one.
2. Optional yoga block. This is handy to have if you aren’t flexible or have poor balance and could use the extra support. I don’t have one and it’s definitely not required.
After 3-Week Yoga Retreat Day 3 – Balance: As I’m continuing to find out, yoga feels really good. Some of the positions were really tough to hold, but I think that’s the point. It leaves room for improvement, so that’s a good thing. My legs feel really good right now though and so does my back. We did some more hip stretches, and I really think it’s doing wonders for my lower back especially. My lungs also feel great, most likely due to breathing deeply for half an hour. That’s one of the things I like the most about doing yoga so far. I have a habit of holding my breath or breathing shallow because of a couple years of experiencing near constant anxiety, and breathing deeply for at least a half an hour each day is really helping to retrain myself to breath deeper more regularly. I really feel great right now!
Another thing I love about these videos is they have a timer that counts backwards as you’re doing the video so you know how much time you have left. It’s a small thing but it’s definitely something I appreciate in a workout video, especially if the poses or moves are difficult. I can tell myself “just this much longer…” I haven’t really needed to do that with these videos so much because the time seems to fly, but I still love that the timer is there.
Tomorrow’s video is called Flow, which is where you put the movements together and I’m guessing you move from motion to motion in a fluid way. We shall see!
Thanks for reading! Check back tomorrow for another review, and if you’re interested in trying them for yourself, please let me know!
April Kolesar
Independent Beachbody Coach
P.S. I’m publishing this one a little late. I did the workout on 8/5/2020, but it’s after midnight now, so the post will probably show 8/6/2020. That’s what happens when you wait too long to read over what you wrote before hitting publish!