I don’t think I can, I know it!

Yesterday, my friend Dominique, who is participating in the same 30-day yoga challenge, asked me “How did you do a full 30 days of yoga last time? It’s only day 5 and day 30 seems so far away.” That’s a great question, and something I asked myself many, many times during my last challenge. I don’t have the perfect answer. I think it depends on a lot of things: why you’re doing it, how you manage your time, what you’re willing to let go of during the challenge (I vote for housework).

I realized I have an advantage here. I’ve done this before. I know I can do it! That’s not to say it’s going to be easy. Combining back to school with 30 days of yoga is not perfect timing. Then again, there is no perfect time. If you wait for everything to fall into place before making a change, you’ll never do anything.

One of the many things I love about this challenge is the e-mail I receive every morning. It’s got yoga options for home practice, nutrition tips and challenges and info about holistic healing. The first thing I do every morning is check my e-mails. It starts my day off right.

This morning, there was a little comic in the e-mail that really made me smile. I wanted to be on that top step.

Today was day 6 and I was headed to a power flow class with Jen. I told her I was a little tired and to take it easy on me and just have us do tree pose. I also whined to her and Amber about all the dragon and gecko pose stuff going in their studio. They didn’t seem too alarmed. Jen and I decided to take a picture before class, to avoid the sweaty yoga hair look.

Jen asked me if I wanted us to start on our fronts or our backs. I said on our backs because I really enjoy butterfly pose. I even know the sanskrit name, supta baddha konasana. I did have to google the spelling though.

I wasn’t really as tired as I thought, because class rocked! The intention I set for myself was to have fun with it, and I did! We did  tree pose, and lots of flowing. Then, we did dragon pose! That thing is following me around! I know it was part of the sequence we were doing and that Jen didn’t just throw it in there to mess with me, but still, yuck. The first thing she said to me after class was “Sorry!” It’s ok Jen, I forgive you.

One good thing did come out of this dragon catastrophy, however. We did a pose I’ve been calling flying crow, but from my googling, I’ve found might be called scissors or simply one-legged arm balance. I fell over many, many times, adding to the fun aspect of yoga. Then, I held it for about 2 seconds. Success! I had been working on this pose early in the summer, trying to do it every day. Maybe I’ll try that again.

This is not me. One day it will be.

After class I hung out with Jen until she had to teach her next class. That’s another thing I love: combining yoga with being social. I’m not going to be going out quite as much during this challenge, but it doesn’t mean I can’t spend time with friends. For some people, yoga is very personnal and quiet. For me, it’s about laughing and having a good time, among other things of course!

If you’re thinking about doing a yoga challenge, or any kind of challenge, tell yourself you can do it until you believe it. It works like magic! (But please, teacher me is asking you to spell correctly!)