I practiced yoga yesterday for the first time in a long time. With all of the back trouble, it's a habit I hope to develop more regularly.

A few months ago, I had bought a set of 3 Gaiam videos - Back Care Yoga for Beginners, Stress Relief Yoga for Beginners, and Gentle Yoga for Beginners. I had done the Back Care video, but hadn't tried the other two. Last night, I thought it would be nice to try the Gentle Yoga tape, but when I put it in the VCR, nothing happened. Turned out the tape was defective.

Boo. I had been stressed out before that, and now I was really stressing out. Solution? I did the Stress Relief tape. This one wasn't defective, and I enjoyed it. I was sad, though, when I realized just how inflexible I am. The instructor used a yoga block in a number of the poses so that beginners could rest their head even though they weren't flexible enough to sink too deeply into the poses. Well, in some of the poses, I still came nowhere near the block. I was ready to get upset about it when a voice inside said, "And you're surprised...why? Your back hurts, you haven't been exercising. You can't be surprised that you're not as flexible as you were when you took a weekly yoga class." Logic prevailed and gave me something to shoot for.

Oh, and I emailed Gaiam about the defective tape, since I really want to have a working copy of the Gentle Yoga tape. I love their videos - I own over a half dozen of the yoga tapes and one Pilates tape. Since the others in the set were OK and I had been using them, I didn't think I could go back to the store. I got an email this morning from someone at Gaiam who informed me that they would be happy to send me a replacement copy of the tape. Gotta love good customer service departments.