After yesterday, feeling gross and blob-like, I decided to wake up and put exercise first. Since June of 2015, I’ve been walking on the treadmill and tracking calories on MyFitnessPal, but I haven’t really seen a lot of progress.

I decided I’d like to add yoga in addition to walking. I used to do yoga when I was married to a stair climber and worked out 2 hours a day. That was 20 years and about 50 lbs ago. So my yoga routines of yesteryear weren’t going to cut it. I needed to start at the beginning. Again.

While looking for options, I found several videos on YouTube by Adriene Mishler, who runs the channel Yoga With Adriene. She has a series of videos specifically for beginners, which was exactly what I needed. So today, I started with her Yoga For Beginners – 40 Minute Home Yoga Workout and I survived. And then I walked for an additional 40 minutes after that.

The routine was pretty gentle, though there were a couple of poses I had trouble with. It was necessary to pad the yoga mat with a blanket under my knee during the floor routine with lunges, as I have a lot of knee issues. I was very careful during those exercises, but did not have any lasting pain, and felt surprisingly relaxed and stretched at the end of the video. Even 12 hours later, I’m not experiencing any knee or back pain, which I’ve encountered with other routines. There were no jarring movements, and Adriene did a great job not only explaining how to move into the poses, but stressing that it’s important to pay attention to what you’re doing and listen to your body. The only equipment used in the video was a yoga mat and blanket, and one could get away with doing this on the carpet if they didn’t have a mat (I do and did use it). This was a solid workout and a nice intro video for someone that wants to limber up and work their way into more demanding yoga routines.

Not a bad start to the week, and I hope to do this again tomorrow. We’ll see where this leads.