a couple of weeks ago a friend suggested that we try a 40 day yoga challenge and i decided that it might be fun. i've been dabbling in yoga - never having felt a strong urge to do it before a few months ago, despite so many friends raving about its mental and physical benefits. anyway i've been doing heated vinyasa flow mostly, with other random classes mixed in... once or twice a week at most and sometimes only once every couple of weeks, so the idea of doing yoga every day for 40 days was intriguing. here’s the introduction to the challenge for everyone who agreed to participate.
"Yogic science teaches that it takes 40 days to create or change a habit. A 40-day commitment to change can provide the shift needed to develop a healthy habit or to drop a destructive habit. A first step in experiencing the challenge and the satisfaction of lasting change is to commit to 40 consecutive days of yoga practice. A 40-day practice is demanding. It is difficult. But you can do it. The 40-day practice gives you the experience of discipline and it teaches you that you can go through the challenges in life and create the change you desire. There will be days when you don’t want to keep going. But as Yogi Bhajan, the Master Teacher of Kundalini Yoga, always said, "Keep up and you will be kept up!" Keep going and, at the end, you will have truly accomplished something."
today starts week two, or day eight. here's how i did in week one:
day 1: yoga for back hair... er, back care. boy did it feel good - i am still so sore from shoveling my car out on monday.
day 2: attempted meditation while listening to sleep experiments play at espresso a mano, but i've never really meditated, so i mostly just zoned out and felt the music.
day 3: mountain pose at cantina (thanks to a tip from rachel, ha!)
day 4: 20 min p.m. yoga
day 5: 30 min yoga for back, neck, and shoulders (i love "feet ......up the wall" pose!)
it's great to have a housemate (jennifer) equipped with with willpower *and* dvds that have managable routines we can do at home :)
day 6: yoga flow shadyside (very pretty, new studio, at least twice the size of the aspinwall one!)
day 7: no yoga. and i already used mountain pose as a pseudo-practice on day 3, so i feel like i can't use that as my get out of jail free card for yesterday. oh well.
