Savasana vs Sauvignon Blanc

yoga and wine

I have two rules that I follow religiously in my health journey – don’t let healthy be boring, and never stop drinking wine.

This blog has been years in the making, mostly in my head. I have wanted to share my passion, my recipes and my very normal approach to being healthy for as long as I’ve been doing it, and I have been ‘writing’ blog posts mentally the whole time. However, I am one of life’s great procrastinators. When I was 8, I decided I wanted to play the piano. I started music lessons at school and progressed to the stage of doing eisteddfods, albeit not very successfully. The reports my parents got went something along the lines of: Lauren is very musical and has a natural talent for the piano, but she doesn’t practice and as a result she is not making any significant progress.

At 15, I wanted to be just like my dad and play the guitar. My parents dutifully bought me a small strummer, one that my midget hands could just about manipulate, and my Dad spent lazy evenings teaching me the basics of majors and minors (who knew my stunted piano career would ever come in useful). My proudest moment was nailing REM’s ‘Everybody Hurts’ with no breaks – all three chords of it. It lasted about 2 months before I chucked it in. No one told me that you had to practice for HOURS in order to get anywhere. As if! Also – hello boys, sneaky teenage drinking and no time for practicing anything other than my sexiest pout in front of the mirror.

Three years ago, I decided to become a Yogi. I write it with a capital because I had every intention of being One Of Those People – the serene yoga girl with the contortionist limbs, the zen-like aura and the slightly condescending smile reserved for all the Other People in my yoga class who had not reached my existential state of being.

I think I did maybe 12 classes in a three year period.

It’s not that I don’t like yoga – I do, very much. I know how important it is for your joints to stay loose and flexible, particularly now in my 30s when I seem to wake up with a new ache after every workout. It’s just that I like to sweat when I exercise – I like to finish with a soaked through t-shirt, shaky legs and fingers that can’t pick up car keys. I like to run, and when I’m at the gym, I like to use weights or power plates for short, high intensity sessions that leave me feeling like I’ve accomplished something. My gymnastics teacher used to say no pain, no gain, and it’s ingrained in me even though I know better now. It’s a mindset that I have to get over before I can ever seriously be a Yogi – even a non-flexible, slightly flustered one that Other People look at with pitying smiles.

Instead of substituting one of my weekly workouts with an ‘easy’ yoga sesh – a prospect that fills me with irrational panic – I do yoga on and off in the comfort of my own home. Erin Motz is my absolute fave for home yoga videos. She calls herself the bad yogi as she quaffs red wine and like me, doesn’t believe that in order to do yoga you need to be a teetotal raw vegan with a propensity for greeting your colleagues with Namaste instead of good morning.

So that’s what I’m all about, and that’s why I promote my blog the way I do. I believe in the 80/20 approach – eat 80% good and 20% whatever you like. And if sometimes I’m drinking wine 30 or 40% of the time instead of 20, then let’s say cheers to the fact that God created grapes and not let them go to waste….after all, someone’s got to drink the teetotal raw vegans’ share. Namast-santé!

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