So I Became The Fire

Side blog for performance-related shenanigans (pole dance, stilts, fire and aerial) and documenting my journey towards getting my flexibility back. My main is a langblr. Porn blogs DNI please :)

[jo-jenova]

07.12.23 - I've started doing ballet at home recently. My relevés are... bad 🤣😭 To be fair to me, the exercise is 8x elevés (both feet) followed by 8x relevés (both feet), repeat with one foot and then start over on the other foot. So I *can* get higher, just not at the end of the exercise. To think ballerinas can just pop up on pointe! The strength in their feet and legs!

I'll get there. These are my starting photos. I've done all of 2 follow-along videos (the first one a couple of times, the second one just today). I'm hoping to take some in-person classes in the new year too. We'll see what happens in a few months if I manage to keep it up!

[jo-jenova]

20.11 ~ 26.11

MON (Dance) - Absolute Beginner Ballet Class 1 || Online Ballet Lesson ✅

TUE (Yoga) - 20 Min Daily Yoga Flow | Full Body Stretch For Your Every Day Routine

WED (Upper body) - 20 MIN DUMBBELL SHOULDERS & ARMS (At Home or Gym)

THUR (Dance) - Absolute Beginner Ballet Class 1 || Combinations Only

FRI (Lower body) - 30 MIN LOW IMPACT LEG & BOOTY WORKOUT (No Squats/Lunges)

SAT (Yoga) - 30 Min Dynamic + Restorative Yoga Flow with Charlie Follows

SUN (Full body) - My own workout (tbc)

[jo-jenova]

Yesterday's flying crow efforts left me a couple of "yoga kisses" on my arms 😅

[jo-jenova]

Well, today's practice was certainly humbling! 🤣🤣

What I was aiming for:

What actually happened:

[jo-jenova]

13.11 ~ 19.11

MON (Relaxation -> Vinyasa *SWAPPED WITH SUNDAY PREV WEEK*) - 60 Min Yoga Flow | Full Body Vinyasa Yoga Flow ✅

TUE (Hips) - 30 MIN YOGA FOR TIGHT HIPS | Leg Day Stretch with Charlie Follows ✅

WED (Power/Intermediate/Advanced) - 20 Min Power Yoga Flow | Full Body Vinyasa Yoga for All Levels ✅

THUR (Hamstrings/splits/legs) - YOGA FLOW TO SPLITS - Vinyasa for Hips and Hamstrings with Charlie Follows ✅

FRI (Arm balance/inversions) - Arm Balance Yoga Flow for Eka Pada Bakasana 1 Flying Crow | Arm Balance Series with Charlie Follows ✅

SAT (Vinyasa/Full body) - 20 Min Daily Yoga Flow | Full Body Stretch For Your Every Day Routine ❌ Just did 10 mins before bed

SUN (Back/shoulders) - 40 Min Intermediate Yoga Flow | Yoga for Backbends + Core Strength ✅

[jo-jenova]

Making future workout schedule plans. I don't know how this will work particularly, but I do want to include more HIIT/weights and dance in what I do. Chances are I'll stick to it for 2.5 weeks and then not be in the mood for something one day and that'll be the end of it 😅

[jo-jenova]

Back in Japan! I ended up deciding not to do yoga while I was in the UK, but not counting it as breaking my streak. I was just too exhausted/jetlagged to the point I didn't feel well, and I didn't have enough space (physical or mental). So instead I focused on doing a little meditation in bed and counting that as my "yoga" for the day.

Since getting back to Japan, I've still been quite tired and struggling to get back into the habit of morning yoga. I've been doing my "bare minimum 10 minutes at night" yoga though. But I'd like to get back into a proper "first thing in the morning" habit! So, here's my plan for this week!

Monday - 20 Min Yoga Flow For Hips & Hamstring | All Levels Yoga (following a nice lil walk in the park to take some pictures of the autumn colours before they disappear, so hopefully my legs will be nice and warmed up!) ✅

Tuesday - Rhythmic Yoga Flow a Play Between Movement and Breath ✅

Wednesday - 40 min Morning Yoga Flow & Meditation | Full Body Yoga for All Levels ✅

Thursday - 20 Min Power Yoga Flow | Full Body Vinyasa Yoga for All Levels ✅

Friday - GENTLE VINYASA YOGA FLOW - Morning Motivation Day 4 ✅

Saturday - Arm Balance Yoga Flow for Tittibhasana Fire Fly Pose | Arm Balance Series with Charlie Follows ❌ (Did 10 minutes in the evening because I failed to get out of bed early enough and was exhausted when I got home)

Sunday - 60 Min Yoga Flow | Complete Full Body Vinyasa Flow ❎ (swapped for 30 Min Stress Relief Yoga | Full Body Stretch to De-Stress)

My plan is to do each video immediately after getting out of bed (after a quick 5-minute warm up!) and follow it up with a healthy breakfast of greek yoghurt and fruit (apple, banana, pineapple, kiwi, maaaaybe something else depending on what I can find in the supermarket). I've not done any of them before so I don't know if they're good, but I do like Charlie as an instructor!

[jo-jenova]

I'm going to the UK on Friday and I'm trying to plan how I'm gonna keep up my daily yoga habit while travelling. The journey there will take about 35 hours (3 hours on the shinkansen, 1 hour on the subway, first flight is 7 hours + 2 hours waiting time before the flight, second flight is 13 hours + the 7-hour layover, plus however long it takes me to get through passport control at Heathrow, then another 3 hours on a train and finally driving to my friend's wedding), but given I have a 7-hour layover I can probably spend some time doing yoga in the airport (I'll be there from 2am-9am so I doubt there'll be many people around, plus airports are weird places anyway so I probably wouldn't get *that* many stares).

It's that day after I'm gonna struggle. The day of my friend's wedding.

Despite travelling for 35 hours, I think the jetlag will have me wide awake around 4/5am. Way before everyone else. So I can probably do some yoga then.

Monday... again, maybe jetlag will work in my favour and I'll be able to get up early. Maybe this will continue for my entire trip. But maybe I'll sleep for 20 hours one day and wake up and be like. Fuck. I missed a day.

Anyway. I'm planning on keeping it light and probably only doing 10 mins/day regardless. Just enough to keep the habit. But I'm really hoping I don't break it, because I'm worried I'll go back to barely exercising, and I don't want that :/

[jo-jenova]

03.10.23 - It's amazing I can still do needle at all given I never train it, or even particulalry work/stretch the muscles I need for it. I know there will come a time - probably sooner rather than later - where I'll no longer be able to do this pose. I'm at peace with that, but I'm not quite ready to let it go just yet. Maybe if I include more back bends and heart-opening yoga sequences, I can keep it a little longer.

[jo-jenova]

25.09.23 - It's been a hot minute since I did bridge. I did a really energetic yoga flow today and was really warm, so I decided to squeeze a bridge in before finishing up and was pleasantly surprised. My upper back is doing absolutely nothing, annoyingly, but given I didn't actually focus much on back bends this session, I'll take it.

[jo-jenova]

August exercise (a couple of days late). Much better than July in terms of actually training specific skills. I still want to do more dance and more weights, but I've started doing more intermediate yoga practices now and I'm really enjoying them and don't see much need to do extra right now.

[jo-jenova]

07.06.23 - Daily Yoga Day 11 - 30-day challenge day 7.

I loved today's flow! I felt really off-balance and my muscles felt a bit stiff in my splits, but it was a fun flow. I'd never tried this arm balance before, and it didn't go super well 😅 but I managed it, even if I didn't hold it for long and my exit wasn't super graceful.

[jo-jenova]

04.09.23 - Day 100 of consistent yoga, and this is one of my faves now! It doesn't sound like much, but I can hold it for a good 10 seconds now, extend my leg and control my exit. I dug out the video from the first time I tried this (all those weeks ago in June) and I took ages getting into it, held it for barely 4 seconds and collasped out of it. My progress is real!

[jo-jenova]

Update

It's been a while since I've posted anything. Not because I've not been doing things, but just because I'm too lazy to post. And, to be fair, most of what I've been doing is "bare minimum 10 minutes before bed" yoga. But stil... I'm on day 73 now! I've finally started following videos again and doing proper yoga in the mornings rather than my shitty half-assed 10-minute pre-bed stretch, and yesterday I did a proper workout too.

Some updates generally:

Despite keeping it up daily and insisting it's "better than nothing", I don't feel like there's any improvement in my flexibility or how my body feels generally

If anything, I feel more stiff, probably because I wasn't paying as much attention to what I'm doing/how it feels, but instead just trying to get it done, and that has consequences for the body!

Additionally, I wasn't doing any kind of warm-up, so it'd just be... some stretches for 10 minutes while trying to work on my breathing and the "mindfulness" that's supposed to come with yoga. While I was tired and wanted to be in bed, actually.

Even so, I feel good about keeping up the habit

My splits and bridge suck right now! I can still do them, but they feel so tight. Mostly because I don't train them. So, I'd like to get back to doing them once or twice a week.

I also want to get back into doing different kinds of workouts, not just yoga. I really want to get strong again; without being strong, I don't feel like myself.

I miss pole and aerial so much! But I've still not found any opportunities to train them around here :( I did a little at the start of July when I had a few days off, and it hurrrrrt. But I could still do a handspring :) Stamina and grip strength were shocking though.

[jo-jenova]

Exercise for June (a few days late). I did indeed stick to my habit of daily yoga, but I didn't really do much else. I'm not entirely sure what to do about that: I definitely want to do more contortion-type training and weight training and work on my handstands, but having a habit of daily yoga does seem to be good for me. And while I could reduce my yoga to maybe 10 minutes a day so that I have time for other things too, I'm pretty lazy and I'm not sure how easily I could convince myself to exercise twice in a day.

Still, maybe I'll set aside an hour a day for exercise and just see what happens. If I don't do yoga in that time, I can do a light evening stretch before bed (which is what I've been doing lately anyway due to my shit knees needing a break). If I do, then no need to do any later.

[jo-jenova]

04.07.23 - I decided to try something a little different: chair dance! It's something I've been curious about for a while, and the pole studio in Tokyo that I train at has classes on Tuesdays. I had a lot of fun! Definitely a more fun way to train push-ups 😅 My hips are feeling hella bruised today though!

[jo-jenova]

25.06.23 - Daily Yoga Day 29 (update)

Still keeping this up! But alas, I don't know for how much longer.

The problem is my stupid knees. I've been experiencing pain on the insides of my knees whenever I bend them, which is, y'know, not ideal. Additionally, I'm still experiencing some problems with bursitis in my right knee (it got better, but then it got worse again), and any pressure on my knee hurts like i've been kicked in the knee cap.

I love having a habit of stretching and exercising daily. I feel more like myself than I have done in a while. But I'm worried about long-term effects this might have.

I'm going to try modifying poses more and maybe making my own routines that are less strain on my knees. But if my knees keep getting worse, I may have to consider taking a break for a bit, and then maybe limiting myself to 3 sessions a week when I get back to it. But maybe I can keep doing some sort of daily movement, even if it's a 15-minute walk.

[jo-jenova]

19.06.23 - Daily Yoga Day 23 (update)

I'm actually quite surprised I've managed to keep this habit up for over 3 weeks now. Surprised, but very happy. I've ended up ditching the 30-day challenge as I realised I prefer to just choose on the day what I'm in the mood for. I still intend to do all the videos (and I'll do them in order), but it'll be as and when I feel like doing them.

Some general updates on how I'm feeling:

Side planks are no longer awful things I hate; they're just a transitional pose that feels pretty okay

My back feels a lot happier and more open. My back bend hasn't improved much, but my spine feels healthier at least.

I'm still experiencing pain in my knee, but it's a lot less. I've taken to practising in kneepads every time and modifying poses to keep the pressure off my knees

My balance is still shocking, but challenging myself is fun

I've not really trained much else since I started, but I'd very much like to add a little weight training and/or dance into my exercise routine soon.

I always feel better after I'm finished, even if sometimes it takes me a long time to drag myself kicking and screaming onto my mat

My diet's improved too. I'm not sure whether it's the exercise giving me enough dopamine to not need so much sugar, or whether I'm subconsciously choosing to eat better so as not to "waste" my efforts to exercise more, but I'm definitely eating more fruit and less chocolate/cake/snacks.

I'm honestly not sure I miss pole/aerial at the moment. I'm really enjoying doing something different and not feeling the pressure to be more. Sure, if there were classes close by and I had the money, I'd probably go to them, but I'm not desperately pining for them.

I do however miss my fans and fire! I soooo wish I'd had space in my luggage to bring my fans :(