Muffin Tops and Bat Wings?

I was standing in line at the grocery store catching up on all of the negative publicity that the headlines at the counter had to offer when a women's health magazine caught my eye. On the cover were blurbs of what I am assuming were meant to be helpful articles for women in regards to developing or maintaining a healthy lifestyle. But I couldn't help notice that all of the headlines were about the way a woman should want to look. Titles such as: "Get Bikini Ready in 10 Days" were splashed all over the cover. And then down at the bottom in very small print was something about "The 5 Foods You Should Eat To Avoid Cancer". Seems to me that article might be more important for maintaining a healthy body than any of those bikini articles. Mind you this magazine was called Women's Health not Women's Shape. I though it was interesting that most of what is being marketed to women in regards to our health still has to do with how we look. Ladies, have we learned nothing?
Then I was flipping through a magazine that my friend loaned me that had an article about yoga and how it can help women banish their "problem parts" such as our muffin tops and our batwings. Seriously? If you don't want your waistline to resemble a muffin top then don't eat muffins. It's not rocket science.
Anyway, that's what lead to this next series of posts. People are always asking me what I do to stay so thin so I thought I would just share my secret here with you once and for all. It's really quite simple: It's all about what you eat and how you move. Below this post you will see two series of photos (thank you to my personal photographer Jay) of a basic series of yoga poses that I do everyday. Yes, everyday. It only takes a few minutes. When my alarm goes off in the morning I head downstairs, fill up the tea pot, and while it's brewing I roll out my mat and run through these poses. You've gotta wait for the water to boil anyway right? So you might as well be doing something productive while you're waiting. Remember my post about Chakras? Well guess what, doing these two series of poses helps to maintain balance in almost all of the chakras. Cool huh?
You will notice that I split the photos into two series. One is called Sun Salutations and the other is simply a series of standing poses that I put together to do in addition to or in the middle of a sun salutation. You will notice as you watch the Sun Salutations series that I step back with my right foot, and then step forward with my right foot. That means this set of poses is only one half of a sun salutation. You have to do all of the poses again stepping back with your left foot to complete one round of sun salutations. As your watching the slideshow of pictures wait for the one where I am standing straight with my arms down to my sides. That's the beginning of the series. So while I am waiting for my tea water to boil I do at least 5 complete rounds of them. In fact, I know just where to fill up the water in my tea pot so that it will start to whistle just as I finishing up my left side of my 5th one.
So tomorrow morning start your morning brew and then roll out your mat and start working on getting rid of your muffin top. Who knows you just might do something that goes way beyond what your waistline looks like as well.