A Yoga PowerPoint for Workouts

To everyone thinking "you know they make yoga videos right?" yes, I am aware.  However, I am also well aware of the fact that I have to severely modify yoga programs to even be able to work with them.  I also don't like goofy mellow music.

To give you an idea of my modification needs, I am somewhere between a robot and a steel beam when it comes to flexibility. God blessed me with a body that looks like it could possibly be a dancer or a soccer player, and I did play volleyball and tennis in high school.  However, when it comes to my hamstrings, they seem to be built for a 4'2" person and just trapped in a 5'7" body.  I have really never been flexible enough to sit with my legs straight in front of me and get anywhere near my toes.  Haha, sad but true.

Anyway I also can't do handstands or anything that involves arm strength to hold my whole body up. So far we have ruled out a LOT of yoga poses.  This is pretty much why I refuse to go take a yoga class, even the beginners would be lightyears ahead of me in ability!

So I made a little PowerPoint that I can use as I have yet to get a Kinect game for yoga.  All I did was find a good Pinterest pin that had a lot of moves I could do, copied it and pasted into PowerPoint.  You can really use this same guideline for anything, I just happen to be wanting a yoga mix.

I cropped the collage image down to the pose I wanted for the first slide, then I right clicked on the slide in the lefthand pane and hit "duplicate slide".  On the copy slide it made I clicked on the picture, went back into format and crop, and adjusted the image so it was at a new pose.  For a few starkly different poses I had to readjust the crop lines, but that was simple!  Duplicating the slide kept me from having to copy and paste over and over again.

When I was done with all of those, I duplicated slides where I would also need to do the reverse side pose.  I went into format again after clicking on the picture on the duplicate, and under rotate selected "flip horizontal" to make a mirror image of the pose.

Next, I cropped out the background in the picture format selection by choosing "remove background" at the far left in my version of PowerPoint.  PP has gotten really good at actually knowing what it is you want to crop out in most cases, so very little adjusting was needed on many of the pictures.  If you need to include or remove certain parts, you simply select the option you want in remove background and click the spot of interest.  Sometimes readjusting the boundaries it creates also is a fast way for it to correct itself. 

Finally, in the transition selection, I set a basic transition (cut or similar) and added a whoosh sound, so that if I could not see the screen I woud know to switch moves.  On the far right I selected transition after a set time, and set my time to 40 seconds.  This would be about 5 deep breaths, plus an extra 5 to 10 seconds to adjust or go to the next pose.

There are a few other poses I may eventually also add from various styles of yoga, especially as my abilities increase.  Back when I used my wii and balance board a lot I was somewhat better with flexibility, but it is not really something I think I will ever be astonishingly better at.

I don't see splits in my future basically.  Except banana splits perhaps...

All in all, it is really simple to use PowerPoint for a lot of different things if you get to know it.  For me, the best part about this is that I can do the yoga poses in the order that makes the most sense to me, which is the order that flows the best.  All floor all at once, for example.

A random craft for a random day.

Happy crafting!