30 Day Yoga Challenge - Day 1

Hi there,

I know I haven't written in forever!  A bunch of things have changed.  We welcomed a son over a year ago, experienced the NICU first-hand, lived through sleepless nights and giving up dairy, and now are working through a deployment.  Plus, I just started my own business as an independent consultant for Perfectly Posh!

While all of these things are exciting on some level, they also all add stress to my life and for the past six weeks or so I've found it hard to maintain any sort of physical activity.  The fact that it's been below freezing most days hasn't helped.  I found Yoga with Adriene's 30 Day Yoga Challenge on YouTube and it seemed like such a great way to get back into fitness.  I always love yoga and I've done Adriene's practices before.  Adriene challenges me with her nontraditional approach to yoga.  She's very knowledgable and fit but she incorporates movement that honestly makes me uncomfortable.  My initial reaction is to want to just hold a pose.  Still.  It's yoga.  It's not swaying.  But, with that in mind, I thought it might be good to get uncomfortable. So, here we go!

Today was Day 1 - Ease Into It. 

When I started the video and saw that it was 35 minutes, I seriously almost turned it off.  It was 8pm.  I had just finished cleaning the kitchen from dinner (and the entire day really), both kids were in bed, I knew I had to still shower and get ready for our early Thursday schedule and 35 minutes just seemed too long.  But, I really wanted to start (and complete) this challenge so I just said "F it" and plopped down on my beloved purple yoga mat.

The workout itself was very basic.  Lots of slow stretching, a little runners pose and could turn into lunge, a couple vinyasas at the end but one thing from the video really stood out to me and made me appreciate it: Adriene told me to notice if I got bored.  She said to acknowledge my desire to move on from the pose but then to come back to my breath.  Multiple times throughout she challenged me to not be a yoga challenge "robot" but to honor my body, get in tune with it, and to take the time for me.  It's very easy for me to get bored while "just sitting and breathing" but her reminders helped me to get past that uncomfortableness because that's exactly the place in my life that needs to change: I need to be able to slow down and just sit and focus on me.  Not my kids.  Not my husband.  Not whatever thing I could be doing for my business at that moment. But those 35 minutes were just for me and once I allowed that, it all felt SO GOOD!

So, Day 1 is done.  It's now 9:20pm.  I'm off to take that shower, get the diaper bag packed up with food for the morning, and then off to read some more Anna Karenina.  That book never ends but I honestly loving every minute of it so I don't mind.

Until tomorrow!

~Laura