Philosophical wonder woman

It's time for So You Think You Can Dance to come back tonight! Of course we have to endure the auditions which can be entertaining too... but it really starts to cook by the top 20. I'm never satisfied with Dancing with the Stars, never even watch that show except to catch what's left before Castle came on. It was too cheesy for me, and ballroom can be thrilling, if it's on SYTYCD :) I really wish (and I have emailed this wish to Fox many times) that So You Think You Can Dance would come out on DVD, if not the whole seasons then at LEAST the top 20 or highlights from the season. But since they don't, we'll have to settle for watching them online at great sites like this: http://www.soyouthinkyoucandancevideo.com/ All aboard the hot tamale train! whooooooo hooo!

thanks to the newsletter from Lama Surya Das: "The path to happiness and a sense of well-being in this very life lies not in avoiding suffering but in using the conscious, embodied, direct experience of it as a vehicle to gain deep insight into the true nature of life and your own existence. Instead of being a reactionary slave to the inevitable pain, frustration, stress, and sorrow in your life, which the Buddha called 'dukkha', you can free your mind such that you have a sense of well-being even when dukkha is present, and you create the possibility of finding compete freedom. Why not dance with the constant vicissitudes of life in a manner that is joyful and liberated, rather than feeling like a victim or being flooded with fear and stress?" -- from "Dancing With Life" by Phillip Moffit

If I do even just ONE of these every day, then hopefully I won't cringe when I see the performance DVD of my July bellydance solo :) First of all, my favorite yoga workout from Karen Voight kills 2 birds with one stone. YogaSculpt stretches one set of muscles while strengthening other sets. So you're getting strength training the same time you are stretching in a meditative state (at least it's meditative for me now that I know the workout well and don't need to look at the screen). When I first tried this workout, I thought I was going to die. In the beginning I simply couldn't do it all the way through. Slowly but surely it's do-able even though my body responds differently to the work out every day. It's important to just be patient with yourself. Even though it's TOTALLY old and outdated, I really like abs of steel and when that got too easy I got Abs of Steel 2 that also incorporates push ups. I feel like my abdominal's are my biggest fit...

Last night I took a ballet class for the first time since probably 7th grade. That's 22 years people! So all things considered, as I look back I didn't do as badly as I could have. I remember all the positions at barre and have been stretching regularly, but once it came time to put a series of steps together across the floor, that's when my brain turned to mush. I used to speak ballet, but I don't remember a lot and will need to do a little reviewing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_ballet In addition, we did some serious stretching both at barre and in the middle of the floor and occasionally my body would twinge and spasm as if to remind me I'm not the spring chicken that used to do these movements. But it also brought back flashbacks of about the time I stopped being serious about ballet... when my childhood teacher would push me deeper into stretches to the point of severe pain. I LOVE watching ballet and dancing it even if I know I was never pro...