Yoga Pants, Avocados and Other Trends …

Back in the 1970’s and 80’s, ‘Avocado and Prawns with a Rose Marie Sauce’ was considered the height of sophistication. Sadly this delicious trend went into hibernation for a couple of decades but I confess to utter delight when it made something of a comeback.

It seems that now Avocado Toast (sadly without a prawn in sight) is the alternative trend, particularly if eaten at a trendy table on the sidewalk at an expensive Manhattan brasserie whilst wearing Lululemon yoga pants.

Wearing yoga pants (or yoga bottoms to my Brit friends) is also quite the ’thing’ at the moment. Another trend. These are not however to be confused with cotton leggings often seen with a v.p.l., saggy, baggy knees, and tucked into ten year old UGG boots – this is a very different look.

Wearing these tightly fitting pieces of Lycra understandably gives the impression that one is either on the way to, or has just left a class; thus meaning that they’re a busy person with a busy schedule, who takes exercise seriously. They’re worn by the sort of woman with good legs and a pert bottom who has a weekly mani/pedi and blowout. They are not the sort who would ever be late to collect their children from school and only ever shaves their legs in the summer. ie Normal human beings. No, these yoga pants people are in control of their lives.

I now aspire to be a Yoga Pant Person.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this current trend has not gone unnoticed by the Colonel, indeed most men, and, in what I can only consider to be a moment of madness or unrealistic optimism, he recently bought me a pair.

Whether he was suggesting I needed more activity in my life to tone my derrière I don’t know, but the effort of squeezing myself into something more akin to a wetsuit was enough aerobic activity to bring me out in a sweat. I am now the proud, if faintly hesitant owner of a pair of dark green yoga pants.

I can only assume that this is what a pair of Bridget Jones’s big knickers or Spanx do. In short, they suck in and elevate.

My bottom has been lifted and is now self-isolating away from the backs of my upper thighs which is quite a novelty … they’ve been too close for a number of years. The seams and stitching seem to take the focus away from lumps and bumps and yet, despite being tightly squeezed in (to the extent that I may require additional help to extricate myself), I can move and bend very easily. These pants have in the space of 3 minutes, taken five years off my legs and bottom. No wonder people are wearing them.

I am now trying to remember those old yoga moves whilst the Colonel looks on in amusement. I can’t say I’d ever go outside in public in them, when life returns to normal, but then again, my mind has been broadened with these new trends and if there was a prawn cocktail involved who knows?

Kx

Pure Purgatory …!

Many (many) moons ago in the freezing cold winters at school, we were told that if we sat on the hot radiators, we would get piles. We were also told we would get them if we sat around doing nothing.

As far as I know, none of us ever did succumb to this supposed fate worse than death, but I don’t think we knew what they were anyway. I wonder we didn’t smell a rat, but Google was not around in those days to either dispel or confirm these rumours and the library didn’t have any radiators at all, so it was unlikely we would have ventured in there.

But old habits die hard. I still loathe being cold and can’t sit still for very long, particularly when the football is on or during long films with subtitles. This has been noted by the Colonel who gives a little twitch of his nose and an audible sigh when I get fidgety and he yelps when in bed I put my cold feet between his thighs … please note, it’s absolutely the best place to warm them, but you might be met with resistance.

Our apartment thankfully is warm however. It has also been cleaned within an inch of its life which as I’ve said before is like therapy for me … it also keeps me active. But there’s only so much cleaning one can do. So, I’ve started doing a little yoga on the sitting room floor which reminded me of a post I did a long time ago …

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Today I enrolled in my first yoga session. Dear God. I’ve just become one of the yummy mummies, but by walking into the mirror-clad room, not so yummy I notice. Quite what happens after two children and hitting forty I really don’t know but frankly everything seems to have dropped further south than The Cape of Good Hope since I last put on my gym kit. Soon I’m going to be needing some sort of a bra-like contraption to lift my buttocks off my calves …. particularly in comparison to our yoga teacher.

To age this woman is nigh on impossible. She’s all long bouncy hair and hoopy earrings and wears what appears to be a leatherette thong over her leotard.

I feel a little over-dressed and overwhelmed. I’m also rather glad that I’ve not brought the the Colonel with me for moral support. He’d be both sniggering and drooling simultaneously. I also hope we don’t have to listen to whale music and trickling water. Oh. Yes, we clearly we do.

Her body flexes and bends in ways that bodies frankly shouldn’t and yet watching her catlike grace and elegance as she fluidly moves from one position to another is quite mesmerising. Everyone is concentrating and silence reigns apart from the the whale music and trickling water which now has some African drums added to it. The water is making me need the loo and the more I think about it the more I need it.

“Focus your mind” she says soothingly, elongating the word mind as her buttocks point to the ceiling.

I’m trying to think about what I’m going to cook for supper rather than the loo.

“Find your inner wisdom” she purrs. Inner bloody wisdom – it’s all I can do to clench my buttocks to prevent an involuntary escape of air from my bottom.

She’s moving around the room, adjusting everyones legs and arms. She’s coming to me …. oh right … not so gentle and calm now is she, as she pulls my arm higher towards the ceiling and my hip further out – my balance is going … I clutch at her leg. Her hoopy earrings have now attached themselves to my hair and it takes a few seconds to restore order with my muttering apologies snappishly hushed. Finally, having been red-faced for the remainder of the class, I leave the purgatory sharpish, desperate to escape, never to return.

But then again, I do feel rather nicely stretched out and there’s a class later in the week with someone called George. Perhaps I might give his class a go instead.

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Keep busy and happy!

Kx

18. Let the Battle Commence!

If you want to beat anxiety and/or depression, you have to be prepared to have a fight. You have to want to fight.

It’s going to be a battle and it’s the hardest of all battles, because what you are battling or rather, who you are battling is actually yourself, or a part of yourself that has secretly grown and grown whilst you’ve unknowingly fed it.  Because every time you have given into it, it’s army has grown in size.

So it’s stronger now than you could possibly have imagined. But you too are strong, aren’t you?  Because you now have the Army, the Navy and the RAF at your disposal.  You have the knowledge and the support which equates to all three forces on your side.

It’s going to be a battle which you will hate. You will hate every moment of it. You will be out of your comfort zone. You will feel exposed and vulnerable. You will hurt and want to give up. You will want to retreat to the warm safety of your home.

You will have to be prepared to put everything on hold and live a slightly different life for a short period of time whilst you starve the beast. You will have to do the things that you don’t want to do and yet these are things that are normal activities. But Betty the Demon Depressive is sitting there wanting you to fail. And if you give up, if you fail, then you have just fed the beast, fed Betty, making her stronger, building her armies.

With anxiety and depression we have to fight. We have to get up, do our jobs, engage with the world. Do our exercise, do our yoga, our mediation, whatever it is that we know helps us. We know it’s hard …. whoever told you life was easy?! It’s not, and it’s doubly difficult if you battle with anxiety and/or depression.

But, if you succeed you will hold the flag up high. You will hold your head up high. You have achieved. You have won! Betty is insane with rage yet withering in her defeat. Just like the witch in the Wizard of Oz when she has the bucket of water thrown over her …. surely we’ve all seen that scene?!

Yes, tomorrow she will try and come back, but just you have that bucket of water at the ready. Just you be prepared for another fight! Of course it’s tiring, but now that you’ve done it once, you know what to expect…… and the best news is that Betty is now weaker. Each and every time you fight her, she becomes weaker.

And you’re strong, right?  Yes!

Battle on McDuff and attack this week!

Kx