I’m challenging myself to do yoga* every day in November.
Many of the writers here at Fit is a Feminist Issue are already very fit and have a consistent fitness routine but I’m not quite there yet.
I am moderately fit and I can keep up at Taekwondo but my commitment to consistent, regular movement varies. I am still working toward the point where daily exercise is an automatic part of my day.
I may not be consistent (yet) but I am PERsistent and that brings us to today’s post.
As much as I had hoped to be very fitness-focused these past two months, I have ended up doing bits and pieces of exercise all over the place. A few pushups here, a walk there, some yoga one morning, my Taekwondo patterns another. I’ve attended TKD classes but I have had to miss a few.
I’m okay with all of that , I have been juggling a lot of things and had a lot of pop-up tasks and it won’t help things if I start being mean to myself about not managing to get more exercise in.
I don’t enjoy this haphazard approach though.
It’s ‘good enough’ but it doesn’t increase my feeling of well-being very much.
I end up feeling kind of scattered. Not a feeling I enjoy.
I want some consistency. I want more physical ease. I want more fun.
And THAT brings me to daily yoga.
Just me and my mat, at home, every day.
I want to do other movement, too, of course, but yoga is the right answer for right now.
a) I like short term project commitments (a month of something feels do-able for me).
b) I find it easier to do something every day than every once in a while.
c) I don’t need to be wearing something specific to do yoga.
d) I can do yoga first thing in the morning without waking anyone else up.
e) I can do it right before bed without waking myself up.
f) And, most importantly, it doesn’t just feel do-able or manageable, it feels necessary. I WANT to do yoga daily.
Of course, going from no specific practice to a daily practice will be challenging, I know that.
That’s why I’m keeping my expectations low.
7 minutes** or 7 poses. Every day.
Care to join me?
*I’d like to acknowledge here that my measurement of whether or not I have ‘done’ yoga for the day will be if I have done asanas, the physical aspect of a yoga practice. I am working to develop my practice in all 8 limbs of yoga but that does not lend itself to measurement or to public discussion. I just want to be clear that I understand that yoga is more than stretching on a mat.
**My choice of 7 minutes comes from two things. 1) I like the number 7 and 2) Kara Leah Grant’s book Forty Days of Yoga. https://theyogalunchbox.co.nz/forty-days-of-yoga-breaking-down-the-barriers-to-a-home-yoga-practice/