Still Stretchy After All These Years (4+)

Early readers of this blog or those new ones perusing the archives (welcome!) know that I have a daily yoga practice of 30′ (or more) going back to December 4, 2013.  (I count the anniversary as December 6th, because I lost two days to having been on anesthesia for an exam.)  When I counted up the days, the 1,500 benchmark seemed impressive enough to revisit.  I actually reach that day Monday but becoming a D-list celebrity steals that fire.  (I’m writing this Tuesday about this blog I forgot to finish on Saturday.) That’s OK, I’ll just do more yoga and it will calm the jangled nerves from all the paparazzi camped outside, clamoring for a few bon mots or a candid picture of A Dude Abikes.

Just kidding.  Of course I’m proud of my 10,020 miles of bicycling in 2016-17, featured in the big write-up in yesterday’s Austin paper.  The goal is to inspire others who are out of shape, overweight, or with other health challenges to bike or do other activities.  But a profile necessarily focuses on me the person.  Whatevs.  My 13 years of being car-free coming up on January 25th (I’ve driven for work or friends’ cars, but have not owned one during that time) is also pretty, Pretty PRETTY good.

But I’m probably most happy about the 4-year+ yoga streak.  They are all my creations — my babies I birthed from a tremendous amount of effort, if you will — so I love them equally, just differently.  But not having a car is just that:  it doesn’t take much effort to not have something.  To bike that much, yes, that’s a ton of effort, but I need to go places.  Doing yoga every single day?  That is NOT easy, my friend.  Read all about it below.

 

How I Made Daily Yoga as Regular as Brushing My Teeth

1.   My sister-in-law challenged me to do yoga for three weeks, 15′ a day.
2.   I joined Yoga Journal for a 28-day program called “Boost Your Willpower.”
3.   After 10 days I didn’t need the program and just left my yoga mat on the floor.
4.   When 28 days passed, it was January 1; my New Years resolution was a habit.
5.   I decided to follow advice attributed to Jerry Seinfeld:  Don’t Break the Chain.
6.   Sharing milestones with friends and family helped encourage me to keep on.
7.   I got a smart phone and began using a great free app called Insight Timer.
8.   Classes at Eastside Yoga, with Pure Action and Heavyweight Yoga all helped.
9.   I added 30′ of meditation for a year, but it was too hard so after a year I stopped.
10.   On hard days, I do very gentle poses, often on the floor, and more pranayama.
11.   When I’m too tired, I lie down in sivasana (corpse) pose and take a power nap first.
12.   I’m afraid that if I stop, I won’t re-start.  So Like Forest Gump, I just keep goin-g.

The time may come when the streak is interrupted.  That will be a learning moment for me, too.  And if it happens, I’ll just get right back on the yoga horse.  Speaking of:

Yoga With Adriene

You may have heard of the yoga teacher who lives in Austin but is pretty famous, at least on YouTube.   I never really checked her out, and when I did I was pleasantly surprised.  Her yoga is a good mixture of easy to challenging, for her diverse audience of only 3 million viewers.  The nice thing about Adriene is that she’s serious about the yoga but also pretty goofy.  Her asides and songs, her dog wandering into frame, and overall easygoing nature.   Instead of my own series, which was getting a little stale, I’ve been doing her 30-day program called TRUE.  I’d urge anyone wanting to get into her yoga to try it.  As she says anytime she makes an innuendo, “Hey-o!”  The screen captures below are:  © 2018 Yoga With Adriene. All rights reserved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

With that, so endeth today’s lesson.  Get out there and go within!

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