Dynamic yoga

 

Dynamic yoga is a form of yoga which is much quicker than other forms of yoga. In most forms of yoga you hold the poses for quite some time while in dynamic yoga there is more of a flow between the poses. Each breath (slow breaths) brings you into a new pose and in only few of them you stay longer to stretch out. Dynamic yoga allows graceful movements in a perfect flow, increased heart rate, increased body temperature, improved body circulation together with the flow of oxygen within your body, building straights and flexibility to your bones and muscels. Like all other yoga styles it got enormous health benefits both for inner organs, breathing technique, relaxation and building up your body in a efficient but natural way.

Dynamic yoga centers on five principles:
- Pranayama: The type of yoga breathing that helps your mind focus on the movements. This is very important to put in practise as fast as possible as it is one of the main principals of the whole yoga class.
- Asanas: The word for the yoga poses themselves
- Vinaya: Another principle focusing on the breath - this one tells you to use your breath to get the right flow through the poses
- Bandga: The principle that focus on your energy and the muscle concentration you reach when entering the yoga poses
- Drushti: The fifth principle is all about your attentiveness where you should focus on being here right now, concentrate on what you are doing and nothing else.

Tonight the little Nordic team all together, myself, Mando and Alo went to the great dymanic yoga class close to Duomo in central Milan. Expect working together we share this great passion for yoga and it is lots of fun to do it together from time to time.

xoxo

Pub night with Stephanie

 

I remember all my pub night during my four years in London. It was part of almost everyone's lifestyle to go to the pub with friends at least once a twice a week. A social and fun tradition England has since hundreds of years. Sometime you go for just a beer/coke/glass of wine/hot tea, sometimes for dinner, or to watch a game or for the traditional Sunday roast lunch.

However Italy is equally social. It it part of the weekly life of almost everyone living in the bigger cities to go for aperitivos at a bar. It one way it is even better as you get free dinner together with your drink.

But a bar is a bar and a pub is a pub. A bar is trendy. A pub is cosy. And yesterday I realise I actually miss the pub hang a lot. I have Milan's oldest pub "La Matricola" just few steps from my place and I wonder why I don't bring along friends there more often?

Yesterday Steppy and I finished off the left overs from my lasagna dinner the night before and then we went down the pub. So cosy.

xoxo

Lasagna dinner with team Nordic

 

If you haven't noticed one of my new "hobbies" is Italian cooking. I want to learn lots. I started off a little cooking school with Francesca just after few months in Milan but in the end we didn't really got that far, just few dishes. Now I am on the road again, I am trying to eat out less and cooking real stuff at home more often. And, as requested by you guys, I am also sharing my recipes.

Today I invited my little Nordic team from work for a Lasagna dinner. I have made lasagnas for years and find it quite easy and a safe choice when inviting people for dinner.

This is how I make it:

The ragu:
- Pan fried onions
- minced meat
- Garlic
- White wine
- Chopped tomatoes
- Salt, pepper, basil and chilli
(I let it cook for an hour, much less than the Italians that cooks it for 3 hours....)

Then the lasagna:

- Fresh lasagne sheets

- I bought the bechamel souse but it is quite easy to make at home but it takes time...
- Mixed grated Parmesan and Grana cheese

Done! However we forgot to take a photo of the lasagna before starting earing. Terrible I know but I guess we were hungry... Here is the piece that was left after we finished...

Below are other pics from the evening

Spicy tomato and zucchini bruschetta

Exotic fruit dessert; mango, papaya and ananas

Aloha, myself and Mando

xoxo

@ ASL for the yearly registration

 

  Oh I hate this place, the ASL office in Lambrate. Remember how many times I went here trying to register and they kept rejecting me asking for different documents each time? Read about it here

Now when I think about it It feels like taken from a comedy movie. And then I am quite impressed of my own persistence of going back so many times, always with a smile on my face, to re-try again just to be treated like shit. What a worrier I was!

Well, now I am back again, as I have to come back every year, but now it should be easier as I already have the card and just need to renew it. Next number is me...

...OK! Now I am on the tram on my way to work. Everything went well. I was well prepared and had with me all kinds of documents they could ever ask for. Perfectly organized I just handled the man every single document he asked me for, he looked angry all the time but when we were finished he said... "the world would be so much easier if everyone would be organized as you Germans..." GERMAN? I am not German but Swedish! The man just saw my surname and assumed that I was German... well, no time for argue, I just smiled and walked away...

xoxo

Alla gangnam style

Yesterday I skipped doing the terribly hard total body class I normally do every Monday and instead I first went home, relaxed a little, and then went straight to the dance class. I felt quite lazy doing this way but it was nice...
We did a very tricky dance. The whole group has got better but today we all struggled. It was fun. I am normally one of those picking up the coreography quickest now adays but yesterday I struggled a lot. But it was fun also for that, a real challange. What would life be without challanges? Then the song of today was gangnam style that K just loooove! :)

 

Xoxo 

Delicious sunday dinner at Anna's

Yesterday evening I went for a delicious Sunday dinner at Anna's place. It was me, Anna, Torri and Emiliano and we enjoyed a oven fried chicken with oven baked potatoes. Anna is such a good chef :)

Time to rush to work...

xoxo

I did it! I signed up!

So all the thinking this weekend today ended up in buying the four months membership at Virgin Fitness Village. I start on Friday. I feel happy. It will be four nice months for sure doing things I love to do in a wonderful place.

On Wednesday I have my first medical visit which is a must for whoever wants to go exercising at this fitness village. The doctor will check more and less everything correlated with sport... Muscles, the back, neck, knee, lugns, a big heart test and some more. I am not overly happy about this as I hate going to the doctor but I guess it is good. A complete body check!

Today I took the exact 19 minutes walk to get there, signed up and they signed me in. Now they will keep an eye of me, my body and my training. Hmm. Well, maybe that is good too.
Today I did a body pump class which was great. Very energetic and friendly instructor but I was quite tired after yesterday so I didn't pump it too much...

Afterwards I couldn't resist half an hour in the spa. Just some jacuzzis and saunas... :)

Below is my healthy lunch I made for myself before going to the gym. Multigrain pasta with spicy home made tomato sauce and a fresh mozzarella on the top. Really nice and great as a base for the gym...

Now I am off for dinner in Annas place. Happy Sunday!

xoxo

Butter and honey for breakfast

What do you eat for breakfast?

I normally vary my breakfasts quite a lot, I have like periods when I eat some things and then I change for a period with something else...

This is what I have eaten this weekend
- 3 toasted slizes of multigrain bread with butter and honey (I know that it isn't overly healthy but I love it!)
- Kellogs K red fruits with fresh milk
- Big cup of Oriental cinnamon tea with honey and milk inside

So what should I do today? Go back and buy the membership at the Virgin Village? Ohhh, I don't know! Better to go back to bed and read for a while...

xoxo

Lazy Sat night in...

My life has been going on non stop since far too long now and in these last days I have felt exhausted. That extremely tired and without energy that you can feel after being sick or something but I had to physical reasons to feel it... So, I promised myself a lazy weekend. Can´t say I have been holding that promise too well so far but at least tonight, at 9.30pm I am already in pajama ready to relax. 

I am still thinking about the Virgin fitness village membership. Am I worth it or is it just waste of money? 

While thinking I have done some shopping earlier one tonight and on the way home I got myself a fresh salmon fillet that I grilled with some nice herbs. Pics of it above. 

Now I gonna turn off all communication to the world and watch a nice movie. 

Good night everyone!

xoxo

Gym and spa day at Virgin fitness village

Persuaded by Silvia this morning I put my alarm at 08.30, had a really big breakfast and took a 25 minutes morning walk to the Virgin Fitness Village I got in my area (well 25 minutes away) and that I didn't even know about.

This is not a normal gym. It is normal spa. It is a massive fitness/ well being village. It is a three floor enormous building consisted of 4 fitness class rooms, one spinning room, a whole floor for cardio and weights and another floor for the swimming pool and the spa and relax area. I have never seen anything like it in my whole life. For me, a fitness crazy girl, this was like entering in paradise, I spent almost 6 hours inside and we did;

- 20 min cycling (while playing different memory or brain games like soduku.)
- Nike Fusion conditioning class (a high level total body class)
followed by
- Flex Zone class (a slightly harder stretch class)
30 minutes rest with some snacks and fruit
- Body test with a personal trainer (will write about it another time)
- 15 more minutes on the sitting bike (while surfing on the web... this place is amazing, told you)
- 20 lanes swimming
and then finally
- More than one hour in the spa enjoying different types of Jacuzzis, emotional showers, saunas and a relax room with herbal tea.

I felt in love with this place. This is heaven! But it is a very expensive heaven. I would spend more for four months than I do in a year in my other gym. Jezez. But maybe it is worth it anyway? One dinner out less every week and I could easily spend the money on this place. I could dance as much as I want. I could do yoga. Try lots of different kinds of exiting fitness classes. I can swim. I can do aqua fitness classes.  And I can relax in the spa every weekend.

The only negative thing, apart the price, is that it is almost half an hour walk from my place while my present gym is 10 minutes away.

Another kind of different thing is that in this gym most people are very good looking. The fitness instructor looked like a barbie, skinny with perfect abbs and fake boobs. And many of the girls in the dressing room looked the same. Fit and fake barbies. It might be motivating being surrounded by very fit people though, even if I don't really like that the gym becomes a superficial place where I need to think how I look before I go. The gym where I go now is the opposite....

But guess what? I think I will sign up at the barbie gym. Four months of happiness. Gonna think a little more about it....

xoxo

Picasso Friday

Picasso Exhibition Milano 2012/2013

Piazza Duomo

Aperitivo at Cheese Cafe'

Tonight was supposed to be my night in. My plan was to go straight home, put on cosy clothes, have dinner and then watch a movie. That was the plan.

On my way home my colleague Aloha convinced me to join her to town to get a dress from Banana Republic. After that I suddenly remembered I had to go to Benetton to get something for my mums dog. After that we realized we were very hungry to we decided to go to Cheese Cafe' for a quick aperitivo. On the way back suddenly the royal castle appended with no queues for the Picasso exhibition - so just had to get in....

Above I have chosen the five art works I liked most of the ones I saw tonight. It is the third time Milano is hosting the massive 250 master piece Picasso works from Paris.

The exhibition was constructed in a way I really liked. It was like a time travel starting from his earliest works until the last ones. The differences of style was evident and the surrealistic ones where the ones that I enjoyed most.

I have never really been a massive fan of art and even less a fan of Picasso, his crazy thoughts and his womanizer life style. But at the same time his paintings is true art immediately when I got to know the exhibition was set up in Milan I decided I had to go. Many of Picasso's paintings or sculptures are for me impossible to understand so I made my own understanding of them, write or wrong I enjoyed it. For some time I also had a free ride a side a guided tour but I felt I was giving too much details that after few paintings I skipped it.

I am happy I was able to see the Picasso exhibition tonight, it was fun and interesting.

xoxo