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Today is Day 60. I am noticing more changes and I have been musing on some things. Here’s what I have noticed: 1. My midsection feels “weird” when I touch it. I think it is muscle. It feels kind of hard. 2. I notice when I am in the studio I need much less space around me than I did when I started. I am really happy to find a little corner of the room where my mat will fit and about 6 inches on one side for my blocks and strap. 3. There were a couple of mornings this week that were hard to wake up for yoga. One because I was out late the night before, and one because it was cold. I notice there is a two minute “choice” period when I decide to go or not go. Holding myself to the daily yoga construct makes my choice for me. I like the structure of daily yoga. It gets rid of the need to have self control or initiative. 4. My core muscles are still less strong than I want them to be. This is obvious in all the balance poses. 5. The longer I do this, the harder it can be to quiet my mind during yoga. For me it was easy to quiet my mind in the beginning. Now it is more challenging. 6. I have some “yoga friends”. People I say hi to in the change room. As an extrovert, I like this. 7. It takes a long time to get fit when you aren’t. I started working with a trainer 19 months ago and then switched to Yoga 60 days ago. Last night we walked around at a night festival and I got tired and sore. I still have a long way to go. 8. I love my mat. It feels important to me. 9. I signed up for the mat cleaning service at the studio. This means I get to leave it on the floor and...
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It is early in the morning. I am awake. One of the dogs woke me up and now I am enjoying writing–trying not to think about how tired I am going to be if I don’t get back to bed. I’ll go to yoga in a little while but for now, it is so quiet and peaceful that I am loving writing. Tomorrow is my 50th day of yoga in a row. It has been such a lovely journey. This week I finished Moksha Yoga studio’s 30 day challenge, but because I began a 21 day challenge that overlapped, tomorrow will be 50 days for me. It has been fun to be on a shared journey with my new yoga friends. But now I feel like I am back on my own journey–isn’t exercise always a solitary journey? It seems I am always trying to find my way with exercise and peace in my soul. One of the best parts of this 50 days of yoga, is that for the last 49 days I have never felt guilty about not exercising. I haven’t felt like I “should” be doing something different. I have known what fitness I am doing and when every day. It has worked for me and has lightened the psychic load for me. My parents tithe financially, that is, they give a set amount each year to charity based on their income. I once asked my dad why they did it. He said, “I never have to wonder if I give enough.” The idea of that is fascinating and I have experienced this 50 days of yoga with parallel peace of mind about exercise. I never have to wonder if I am doing enough. Knowing I am doing enough has illuminated some of the bad advice I sometimes get, too. I saw a kinesiologist who suggested I do some cardio. “But I do yoga every day,” I said, stunned. “Yes, but that is just stretching,” he replied. “Have you ever taken...
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I am a grown-up. Well, most of the time. But Facebook adds an element to my life sometimes that makes me feel like a gangling, unattractive 14 year old who wasn’t invited to the slumber party. It is a weird phenomenon to read about a bunch of my friends who got together and didn’t invite me. Now, I don’t intellectually think I need to be invited to everything. In fact, if I was invited, I might have even declined because we have a lot going on. And often on the weekends I am near socially phobic because I have talked to so many people that week in my professional life and I just want to chill. But when a bunch of “friends” post on Facebook about the great time they had together, and I wasn’t invited, it hurts my feelings sometimes. But this isn’t an article about my feelings. I’ll deal with my feeling on my own time. This is an article about this weird time we live in with social media and technology in general. Our parents didn’t have to deal with this! Their friends didn’t have Bridge parties and then post about it on Facebook. Talking about it would have been impolite. I can’t imagine one of my mom’s friends saying to her, “We had a party last night with about 20 people and we had a great time, but we just couldn’t invite you. But let me show you some pictures of us having fun. You are friends with all of us, so I am sure you would like to see them, wouldn’t you?” NO! Because it would be bad manners. But this is exactly what happens on Facebook all the time. I am not sure what our new etiquette around social media should be. Should we all just toughen up? I have a friend who has lots of friends and she is also troubled by this. When she invites a few people over, and they post on Facebook, her other...
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After day 42, I admit it, I am tired. I don’t want to be tired. I like the daily practice. In my head, I want to keep going and going on this extended challenge. I want to do 50 days and then extend it to 100 days and then maybe do 365 days of yoga. The reality is, I am tired. It is the sort of tired that doesn’t seem to go away. As I am better at yoga, I work harder, try harder classes, and my body pushes more and more. And I am tired and I don’t know how to get un-tired. I am also noticing the impact of me devoting so much time and energy to something in my home. It is messy. The boys have been busy and between me being tired and the boys being busy our home needs some attention. All that said, I am not sure if this will all work its way out and I will be able to keep going. There is something about the daily practice that really works for me. I don’t know if I have ever done anything for 50 days straight before (other than school and my parents got me there every day). I feel empowered and I love seeing the changes happening to my body. It feels so good. As far as weight loss goes, I can report I am down 10 pounds. I check daily to see where I have new muscles showing up. I am most impressed by the muscles in my back, forearms, hamstrings, and belly. I am still wondering if my triceps are getting enough workout and I think my calf muscles are smaller than when I started. They may just be well stretched and not as “tight” as before. My state of mind is solid, even though I have been feeling the stress of our busy lives. **My initial 21 day yoga challenge turned into a 200 day yoga challenge – share the journey with...
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