Backseat Positivity
"Able to make serious topics lighthearted and fun - I even laughed at some points!"
Get your bi-weekly dose of positivity in this fun podcast with Dr Dawn Barlow, who helps you navigate all of the weird/best/worst parts of life!
Dawn takes you on the self-improvement journey you didn't realise you needed... Bought to you by a doctor who hasn't had life as sweet as many of her comrades. She knows firsthand just how rubbish life can be, yet has managed to turn her life around for the better!
From relationships to mental health to happiness, make sure you buckle up twice a week (Mondays and Thursdays) the join her and her guests for candid self-improvement. Don't forget of the course, the "weird thoughts" segment, where Dawn and her guests share weird thoughts from their lives.
Dawn says:
Sometimes life reminds me of being in a washing machine. It's a bit spinny and turbulent for a while, but then it stops and gives you a little break before spinning you into oblivion once more. It feels like the washing machine wants to wash something bad out of all of us... positivity.
Some might EVEN say that positivity is shouting from the backseat and no-one wants to listen to it... [backseat positivity] More than once a week, but less than 4 times a week, you can shove me in your auditory canals and listen to me chat about L.I.F.E., self-improvement, mental health and anything else that my little monkey-mind paws can grasp onto.
Sometimes other humans actually dare to join me.
It's candid, it's fun. Woo!
Backseat Positivity
Turning My Living Room Into a Hot Yoga Disaster
Who said turning your living room into a sweltering hot yoga studio was a good idea? Certainly not me, after my side-splitting and sweat-inducing debacle that takes center stage in today's episode. It's Dawn here, spilling the beans on my valiant but vain attempt to save a few bucks and the precious minutes I spent getting to my local hot pod yoga class. Brace yourselves for a roller coaster of DIY disasters and the stark realization that sometimes, convenience isn't king. I'll regale you with the saga of my living room turned sauna and how a fan heater, a yoga mat, and great intentions weren't quite enough to rival the structured discipline of a proper studio setting.
Amid the laughs, I've also got some pearls of wisdom to share on smoothing out the rough edges of our day-to-day lives to boost productivity. No guests joining me today, just a hearty dose of reality as I dissect the friction points that can chip away at our well-being and how a dedicated space for our endeavors can make all the difference. Tune in for a candid reflection on the social dynamics of group classes versus the solitude of home practice, the quirks of setting up (and tearing down) a would-be yoga space, and the technical snafus that even I can't always dodge. It's all about finding the balance between laughing at ourselves and learning from our foibles. Don't forget to hit that like button and drop a five-star rating if you enjoy this blend of humor and hindsight!
Please consider helping me out, I'd seriously super appreciate it! <3
https://www.patreon.com/diariesofadoctor
I made a pretty big old mistake the other day and I was thinking I was gonna try, and you know, save some money and save myself some time maybe, and but it was kind of just an embarrassing failure. And I did video actually. But I thought I would just share my experience with you on the podcast, because it was actually something I did talk about on the podcast. It was hot yoga. I thought I would try and do hot yoga at home and, oh boy, was it a big fat flop failure. No, probably don't even bother, and I'm gonna tell you what happened and why it was such a disaster. So I recently tried hot yoga, but I have been going to something called hot pod yoga. It's right in the centre of Bristol, which is the city. It takes not a lot of time to get there, but it's like a fairly big plava and I kept going at like rush hour because that's when the sessions are after work, and I was. You know they don't let you in if you're late, that's you have to be there three minutes before or they shut the door. That is that should be their motto three minutes before, always shut the door. Because I was actually late once and I rang them before and they were like yeah, you literally can't come in if you're late. So, but it's actually in some ways, the lateness means that you intentionally be on time because you're like, well, I literally can't be late. So it means that you end up getting there like 10 minutes before and chilling out in the room rather than like running in, like this is most of my life running into an exercise class and like literally it's starting within like a minute or so. What you end up doing is you end up arriving and then chilling out and doing some own personal stretches and like organising yourself for like 10, 15 minutes. But anyway, that time I did actually have to skip and then I did the session after. So thankfully I did get a spot on that.
Speaker 1:But it was like super stressful and I thought do you know what? Let's try and figure out if I can do it at home. Not only that, not only is it stressful trying to get into the city centre. There's also no parking, absolutely none. So you have to either cycle or get a bus or get a lift. Walking would literally take like an hour. It's just not worth it. Or I could try somewhere closer. But there is somewhere closer, but I haven't yet tried them anyway.
Speaker 1:The other problem with hot yoga is it's really expensive and I get it. It's because they have to like spend a lot of money heating the place. I get it, I understand, but it's also like you don't want to be doing it every day. So I thought you know you don't want to be spending like. Some of the sessions are like 15 quid. Obviously that's without like a membership. It's cheaper if you have like lots of sessions, but also they're really hard to book onto. They're like fully fucking booked. So all of these reasons put together made me think do you know what? Let's try it at home.
Speaker 1:And the problem is I do actually like going physically to exercise classes. I never liked doing stuff from home, so it was kind of more of an experiment that went wrong. But because I won't end up exercising, that you know sometimes I'll skip it, or I just won't end up doing it or I'll keep putting it off. If I have a scheduled time like you need to go to to hot yoga for five o'clock tonight, I will go, I. But if I'm like right in, you know, half nine tonight, I'm going to go and do a yoga class downstairs on my own. I won't do it. I just don't. I just can't. Can't muster up the motivation to do it on my own. So, alas, we end up having to go to exercise classes, which I think is really beneficial. Also, people need jobs. So, you know, we are kind of funding instructors as well and like gyms and stuff. So it's not all bad. You know, youtube is not fully the way forwards, but it is pretty useful. So I was finding hot yoga quite beneficial for my mental health or my I don't know about my physical health, but it felt good. Okay, firstly, just doing yoga, I think, rather than necessarily hot yoga, but hot yoga does feel good, like I think, because you get so stretchy. So what I did was we have a fan heater in the living room downstairs.
Speaker 1:I made a lot of mistakes in this journey, let's put it that way. So what I did was I set up my mat and all was fine. It's my towel mat. It's not my proper mat because I didn't have a mat at that time, but now I do. I've actually been given a mat from. Maybe I should include it in the link. Actually it's by it's from. It's like amazing. Honestly. It's amazing, and I know I got it for free, but I wouldn't be saying this because I'm not a liar if it weren't true. It's like the grippiest mat you'll ever experience. It's from Community Unity oh, that's so funny. Community Unity Yoga. It's an eco-friendly mat. It's made out of rubber and jute and I do actually have an affiliate link. Maybe I should start like putting that in, because I'm really bad at like actually advertising these things. But anyway, next time I use that.
Speaker 1:But I didn't have that at the time, so I used my hot pod yoga towel and basically what I did was I started off thinking, right, I'll just turn on the heater and it'll be fine. I'll just turn it on and I'll work out in the room and it'll be fine. I did a 60 minute bickering session. Now I don't necessarily agree with bickering, because I'm pretty sure he raped people not good so. But he has some difficult yoga sessions and I thought you know what I want to do? A 60 minute one. I want to work hard. So we did that and it wasn't by bickering, it's by a mother guy, gary Oldman, I'm pretty sure that was his name, that was his. That was the guy who was running the yoga session, but it was like a bit crumb style, I believe, anyway.
Speaker 1:So oh, I forgot to mention that when I do hot yoga I get really stinky, like actual onions have been rubbed in my armpits, like honestly, it stinks and I don't know how to get rid of it. It's really hard to. I've tried washing beforehand, I've tried putting extra deodorant on, I've put tripping perfume on. Doesn't work, I just still stink. So I was thinking you know, if I'm at home, it doesn't matter if I'm stinky, the only person that's gonna know is me and the dogs, and that's it. And then I can just go and have a shower. I forgot to mention that one.
Speaker 1:So anyway, I choose a bit from yoga. I've got my mat or my towel and I've turned the fan heater on. Now that room can get pretty toasty when you turn that fan heater on. But why, didn't realize? But it wasn't getting up to 40 degrees obviously, like it just wasn't, and I didn't know how to get it that high because it just wouldn't work.
Speaker 1:Basically, I live in a 1923 I guess it's like a kind of Victorian house. The ceilings are really high, 10 foot maybe, I don't know. Probably three meters, I don't know something like that, and maybe not three, I don't know. Anyway, they're high and basically I guess the heat was rising. I was also on the ground floor, so it's not as warm there and the the house is just kind of a cold house. It's just chilly. It's quite difficult to heat. So I think, did I turn on the heating as well? I think I might have turned on the heating. I turned on the fan heater.
Speaker 1:I could not get it at the level that I needed it to be, to be pouring with sweat with no clothes on, because when I go to hot yoga I don't have any clothes on. I have like a sports bra and leggings and that's it, and I'm still pouring with sweat. So next I decided right, I'm gonna put on loads of jumpers. So I put on two jumpers and I had a top on and a bra and I put on I had a pair of leggings and then I put on a pair of jogging bottoms as well. I thought this is gonna do it, surely? Mmm, still not quite enough. So I decided I was going to put on a woolly hat.
Speaker 1:Anyway, there I am doing my yoga in my woolly clothes, like literally so many layers on. It's like it's already difficult doing yoga when you're a little bit bigger when you're like a curvy person and then add extra bulk to you and it becomes even more difficult. Now the thing is, the people on the yoga video were like yoga instructors, like, for fuck's sake, thanks for making me feel bad. So there they were doing like, literally bending themselves in half, and I was like, no, it's not happening. I mean, that was like the least of my problems, but it was a problem nonetheless. So, oh, I also forgot to mention it's February, so it's not even a warm like. If it was June, it might have happened. June, july, august, september, the summer months I might have been able to get it hot enough, you know midday or something.
Speaker 1:I was having a big failure over time. Anyway, I got a bit of a sweat on. The more I did it, I was starting to sweat more. But the thing is I just wanted to take off all my clothes, and I did take them off and then I just cooled down like pretty much instantly. So I was like, right, let's put them back on again. It was just it felt kind of disgusting like I was wearing a hat and I was like sweating profusely in it and I had the. I turned the fan heater to like blow straight onto me because I was like right, that will make me hotter. It did, but then also I just felt kind of icky because of that and also it kind of dries the sweat off of you. So it like dries you out. So it was all not going very much to plan whatsoever.
Speaker 1:The last nail in the coffin is the fact that you then have to wash about eight pairs of clothes. You have to wash like three or four tops and then two pairs of trousers, and then you know, when I go to hot yoga I only have to wash my towel and my sports bra and my obviously my underwear and then my leggings. But when you're in so many clothes, you've sweated through all of them. I didn't think this through. You then have to wash all of those clothes because you've worked out in them Maybe not the outer layer, but definitely the hat, definitely both pairs of trousers, definitely the bottom, two layers of clothes. Like then I was like fucking hell. Now I've got loads of washing to do and I didn't consider this.
Speaker 1:Now what I'm thinking is the thing is they do actually sell the hot pod yoga tents and what they are is like they inflate. Basically they're kind of like a contained bouncy castle, like that's, but like a tent, like a tent bouncy castle but like a roof, and it basically stops all the heat from going out. Now you can actually buy single ones of those. I don't know how easy they are to put up and down, but I just don't think I could be bothered to do that. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Like what I would want is somewhere that it was just constantly out, like I've got my podcasting room. It's constantly ready to go, because the more friction I have to do stuff, the less likely I am to do something. So if I've already got my gym bag packs, easy, I grab it and I leave. If I've already got my meal prep ready, easy, I grab it and I leave, whereas you know, for instance, to get my bike out, I have to unlock I'm not joking four locks and lock them all again and then I have to cycle around the back of the house and then I'm out my car. I open two things. I don't have to lock them, they're on the latch. So I just shut the door and I get unlock my car and I just get into it and then I drive off. It's so much easier. You add more friction to things and you just don't do it.
Speaker 1:So if I had to inflate a tent every time I wanted to do yoga, would I do it? I don't know, I don't think the thing is. I wouldn't want to keep putting it away and getting it out again. The other option is I do actually have a hydroponic tent, and I'm not growing marijuana or anything, but I had it for my house plants when I was, you know, growing lots of them and I put it in the garage. Now the thing is that thing is massive. Could I do yoga in it? Absolutely yes. The other problem is I'd have to wear sunglasses because it's really like it's reflective. So it would be an interesting look.
Speaker 1:But the thing is that is sat in the garage at the moment and it takes up so much room. It's like probably two or three meters long and a couple like one or two meters. What the fuck was that noise? I don't know. One or two meters, like one, at least 1.5, I would say, or at least one meter width. So the thing is you're going to end up like taking up so much room in the garage for that. Now you could say we could put it up and down? No, it's not possible. It is so heavy that I have. Since we've moved here, I just haven't put it up. It would be useful to have it in the garage, but firstly, it takes up so much room, but secondly, it's so heavy. Oh no, the camera just died. Oh, one second. Well, that's going to be a fucking disaster, because now I've probably lost loads of video.
Speaker 1:I thought I would make it through the whole episode on that one bit of battery. But this is the problem it has to be fully charged. The batteries go from full to 50%, and it's quite a long time, and then from 50% to 0%. It's shorter, it's definitely not equal. So I always charge every battery. But the thing is I was in the flow so I was like right, I'll make it through with 75%. And it didn't make it through, so that was a sad time. Anyway, we'll just have to put some funky footage over it. You know how we do. I haven't had that happen in a while, to be fair. So we're doing pretty well.
Speaker 1:So I could put my hydroponic tent up, but it's such a faff. It's so heavy and it takes up so much room, and I don't want to lose loads of my garage because I've got some exciting things coming up where I'm going to film in my garage, I think, so I don't want to use up loads of room. Also, I think going and doing a physical session in a class with people is actually kind of beneficial. I might not talk to any of them, but I feel like I've physically socialized and I've had an instructor and I think there's definitely benefit of having physical human contact. Whether or not you talk to them is beyond the point, but it's like going and physically leaving the house and doing something Like I don't want to be in my house all the time. So that's definitely a plus side. And I will not be doing hot yoga in my house again, not only because the electricity bill will probably be extortionate, but also because I think it's just nice to go out and leave and also because it just didn't work, so fail.
Speaker 1:Anyway, thanks so much for listening. I'm sorry for the interruption in the middle. I was so close to finishing as well. Fml, so I upload every Monday and Thursdays. We basically document my disasters in life and health, wellbeing, fitness, mental health, happiness, etc. And I've been Dawn and give it a like and a five star rating if you're listening on the podcast. Thanks so much and goodbye.
