Paddleboard Yoga

There's this thing called standing upright paddlboarding. SUP if you are cool, but I'm not that cool. It's a big buoyant surfboard sort of thing and when I first saw it done, I knew I wanted to try it and that I would like it.

Call it a fault of expectations or ego, but I tried it and I loved it. My friend Lauren invited me to do paddleboard yoga with her last summer but I got the stomach flu and had to give my spot to someone else. Well this summer,the studio she goes to was doing it again and we made it out to Tempe town lake to try out some asanas on the man-made sea.



The instructors had a water proof camera and snapped some candid pics, but the only ones of me were unflattering and not even doing anything cool. Naturally I will post one for your enjoyment. This one makes me look like an Amazon and Lauren look a snack I brought along to eat later.

This one is slightly better. And I'll tell you that it is deceptively difficult to lean like that on a board. You really have to keep your weight on both feet or you go for a swim. Yoga on the water really makes you focus on technique.

But dude, some of these ladies were rocking it. I only held the headstand for like 2 seconds and fell smack into the water, but these ladies were solid and inspiring.

As a group we looked pretty cool and all the pedestrians stopped to watch.

Strangely enough the headstands weren't as hard as I expected. I'm a bit rusty since gyms don't typically do inversions, but if you could ignore the board's seam in your head, it was doable. Tree pose was the most challenging to me. You had to keep your weight so perfectly on all 4 corners of your foot and the only stationary focal points were far away on the shore. I could barely get my foot to my ankle.

It was so much fun that I took my little friend Callyssa out to try it. And I brought my phone along in a ziplock to record the fun.

 If you ever get the chance to try paddleboarding, take it! It is so much fun!