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Posts Tagged "200 Days of Yoga"
I didn’t succeed at my 200 day challenge. I just couldn’t complete the number of classes I would need to make up to do it. I took my son to New Mexico for spring break, I couldn’t find a yoga studio, I got asked to work in California, and I realized I was just not going to complete my 200 days of yoga challenge. It was a disappointment to realize I wasn’t going to make 200 yoga classes in 200 days. It was a challenge I liked. In the back of my head, I had hoped I could continue and could actually do 365 classes in 365 days. I wanted to know what a year of yoga would do for my body. How would I be different. I was fascinated by the idea that I would do yoga every day and I could see the impact it would have on my life. But I never scaled back my travel or other activities. I wanted it all. I realized I am more diverse than just yoga. I want a rich and full life and I want to travel. I am not willing to give up travel to do yoga. So here I am, trying to find a standard and doing mostly daily yoga. I have been trying to figure out my “new normal.” If I don’t do yoga every day, then how much yoga do I do? I also love the benefits of going almost every day. I like how daily yoga impacts my life. It is a practice and I like practicing yoga almost every day. I really struggled over this and it felt like a real journey for me to figure it out. In my life, I haven’t been good at regular exercise. I don’t wake up and think “exercise sounds good” because mostly it doesn’t. I would rather read a book on the couch. So I had some fear that if I didn’t do yoga every day, then I might just stop...
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I breathe, I rest, I lie face up on my mat with my head toward the mirror. I feel my shoulder blades under me opening up my chest. I stretch my feet just outside the sides of my mat. I place my heels just over the ridge that is my mat onto the floor. I let my feet fall outward. My palms face up. Ready to receive, I think. My head tilts back slightly. I breathe deep into my belly. When I do the first deep breath on my mat, sometimes there is a breath so deep it is like it finds an extra pocket in my lungs and more air goes in at the end. Not every breath is like that but when it happens there is a sweet release. My favorite breath starts with a really good exhale. Sometimes I realize I don’t really finish breathing out before it is time to breathe in again. I lie in shavasana trying to keep my mind clear, focusing on my breath. As thoughts come, sometimes I try to clear them, sometimes I watch and release them, sometimes I work too hard trying to turn them off. As I become more fit, my mind is more and more active. I am having more and more challenges as my mind tries to get work done during my yoga practice. In the beginning, this was almost a non-issue. I was really working on the postures and breathing and I didn’t have all those racing thoughts. Now I actually need strategies for my emerging thoughts. I have tried breathing and holding a thought like “clear” or “present’ in my mind with each breath. The other night during a discussion about meditation, a guy I had just met told me to notice my thoughts and release them so I have been trying that, although I have to admit, I may lack some discernment by implementing new methods into my yoga practice just because I talked to a guy...
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I think I just committed to 200 days of yoga. As I wrote the title, it seemed right. I missed my 100 yoga classes in 100 days but I realized that if I extended the time, I could catch up. I am still down 8 classes, but I can make up those classes and still meet the 200 days of yoga goal. I had to really think about why I am doing this yoga challenge. For a while I wondered if I am being obsessive in my daily commitment. I found it incredibly challenging to be with failing to make my 100 day goal. Often in my life, not making a goal would make me quit and wander off–losing the benefit of what I was doing. In this case, I was more interested in digging deep, to keep going, and to try to meet a future goal. When the people at the studio found out I was doing a 100 day challenge, I noticed a little touch of ego. It got me attention and that worried me. I don’t want my daily practice to be about feeding my ego. I want it to be about the practice–me, my mat, and my breath. I have wondered if I could trust myself to let go of my daily routine because I am not sure I trust myself to make good decisions about exercise if I don’t have strong boundaries. I didn’t like setting a goal that was about me not being good enough to do it without a daily commitment. It seemed to be coming from fear instead of abundance. I have been really paying attention to why I love daily yoga so much. There is something I get if I go daily that I wouldn’t get if I went 3 or 4 times a week. It is rest. When I am there daily, it is impossible for me to work out hard every day. I get tired. My feet hurt. I get sore. Going...
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