Yoga Challenge
ARE YOU IN?
As I said in my original post about the challenge, I am doing this challenge for the stretch, time away, and strength. You may have other reasons for doing the challenge.
Day 1: As it is Sunday and like Kelly I had a bit more time on my hands I did just short of 20 minutes of yoga. I started with two videos, both by Polly.
I hadn’t done the newbie video in quite a long time so I decided today was a great day to do it again, seeing as its the start of the challenge!! For those of you that don’t have the ‘yoga gear’… don’t fret. I don’t own a mat or a yoga block. In fact I don’t even have a yoga strap that is seen in both of the above videos. What did I use?? A belt! It works! I tried to concentrate on my breathing today as I find that usually helps with relaxing. I love the runners video and have been doing it for quite some time. Frog foot pose is my favourite! I also find that I become painfully aware of how tight my hamstrings are. Definitely looking forward to feeling those loosen up. I think the runners video would be great as an extended yoga session. As Polly says in the video it’s a good idea to hold the poses even longer than she does, which I will probably end up doing another time! I finished the video craving more!
I’d recommend checking out some websites to learn a few of the basic poses. Here is a great guide from yoga download.
Day 2: I was a bit worried about fitting in my 10 minutes today, which is kind of crazy because it’s literally only 10 minutes!! That’s what making time for yourself is all about. You need to make it a priority and that’s exactly what I did today. I focused on some good stretching in my legs. Yesterdays yoga session proved to be tough because my hamstrings are so tight! I hung in rag doll pose for a few minutes.. love that one! I also did crescent lunge as that is one of my favourites. It’s so easy but I find its a good stretch and I love opening up with my arms in the air. I don’t think I’ll be attempting crow for quite a while lol! No videos tonight.. I just went with the poses that I knew I was comfortable with doing on my own…. warrior 1, seated twist, and finishing with hero (one of my favs!). I love to do hero when I am finishing and focusing on my breathing. It’s so relaxing.
Day 3: This was the hardest day for me to get some yoga in because we were out most of the night. I didn’t even do it until I was in my pj’s just about to get into bed (which is why I didn’t blog about it!!). I did some of my own poses again… copying the ones that I did from day 2. I stayed in child’s pose for a while though and tried some downward facing dogs. Steve thinks those ones are hilarious to watch me do, I don’t know if its because of the name of it or because my butt is so high in the air. Who knows! I did work on flattening my feet though rather than being on my toes. It’s such a stretch for the back of the legs!! I worked on a lot of breathing too which was especially nice to relax me before getting into bed for the night!
Day 4: I wasn’t feeling very well tonight and made a beline for my bed around 8:30pm. This left me thinking about what type of yoga I was going to do and how I was going to get my belly to co-operate. I decided that sitting on my bed, cross legged and focusing on sitting in silence while practicing my breathing was the best thing to do. I don’t do that very often…. a form of meditation? I’ve never really sat in silence for more than a few minutes. It was strange doing it for 10, but I think it was beneficial. I calmed myself down and felt extremely relaxed by the end of it. I think this challenge has opened me up to not only the yoga moves but last night it also allowed me to focus on one of my goals which was the time away from everything. I ended my silent session with a couple of minutes in child’s pose, which felt amazing to stretch out my upper body which has been tense.
Day 5 & 6: These two days featured two more videos from Polly.
I loved both of these videos! I find the greatest thing about doing this challenge is it’s motivating me to branch out and try new things that I never did in the past. When I was into yoga before I stuck to the ‘yoga for runners’ video that I posted before. Polly’s videos are great for short bursts of yoga.
In the next week I hope to extend my daily yoga into longer sessions. I haven’t found it that difficult to get in a quick 10 minute session but i’m almost finding that it’s sometimes too short. I want to extend it more and spend more time getting better and increasing my knowledge about yoga and the best poses for me. I’m planning on spending more time on yogatoday.com. A website that I grew to really love a few months ago!
Day 7 & 8: not going to lie here; no yoga was done. I just didn’t feel up to it and I couldn’t force it.
Day 9: I felt much better today and I was ready to take on some poses. I did a short and light weight training session for my arms and then focused on some poses that really made my arms work. Downward facing dog and cobra being two of them. I LOVE these, but still DF dog gets me every time. I can’t seem to get the heels of my feet to touch the ground. I think my calves are still too tight. Then my arms get so tired, I just end up coming down into child’s pose. Le sigh. I think I need to work on using videos each day this week rather than chillin’ in my own poses. The thing I love about videos is I find them to be a good challenge, whereas I do find that if I am doing my own poses I can slack a little bit.
Do you find this???
I hit a wall with yoga this past weekend. I just wasn’t feeling up to it and I honestly thought that even just 10 minutes of yoga would be doable each and every day. Well, I was wrong- because even 10 minutes seemed too much for me!! But, i’m not going to dwell on it. I jumped back on the wagon today and i’m going to *try* to keep it up this week.
Day 10: I decided to switch it up a bit and instead of waiting to do my yoga session before bed I did it first thing in the morning before work. I sat in silence for a bit, thinking about what I wanted my day to be like, and then I went to You Tube to find a video to start my morning with. I was pleased to find this 25 minute balance video from yogatoday.com. I really enjoy the sessions on yogatoday and this is a sample session. Around minute 10 it shows that you extend your leg out infront of you. I modified that quite a lot because i’m not that flexible. I just stretched it out infront of me without grabbing my foot. I didn’t do the full video (lack of time before work) but I did do the first 12 minutes of it. If you have a look at the link, there is a video called ‘perfect posture’ that i’m hoping to do today or sometime this week.
Challenge for Day 11: Change it up a bit today! Do your yoga session in the morning instead of at night, or vise versa! See if it changes how you feel.
Please feel free to chime in as much or as little as you’d like during the month. You don’t have to post everyday, but I would love to know how you are doing!
Trackbacks & Pingbacks
- November 1st – 30 days of Yoga « Simply Fabulous
- Where do you stand? A potentially touchy topic. « Simply Fabulous
I decided to join the challenge for a few reasons. Like you, I need the stretch, badly. The second reason is because I need to learn how to stay calm in a difficult moment, one of the major principles of yoga. The idea of breathing MORE when something is hard is something I really want to apply to my life. Stress is so bad for our bodies and yet we spend most of our days stressed. So that’s why I’m doing this.
Today I did 20 minutes (I won’t be this much of an overachiever every day but it is Sunday so I have more time) of my prana power yoga video. It’s a DVD made by the yoga studio I go to sometimes (not often enough). It’s an hour long but I am going to be doing parts of it for this challenge, in addition to yoga is yummy and other online downloads.
Tomorrow will be the real challenge- first VERY busy day, will I fit it in?
I’ve only done 10 minutes of stretching (and breathing!) today but it was 10 minutes just for me. By the way, I found yoga2hear.co.uk which has a free trial download… Might be worth a try.
This isn’t going to be a challenge for me since I already commit everyday for little bit of yoga. However, I’m going to do a challenge of NEW YOGA MOVE daily. I hope that’s okay!
I did 10 minutes of the yoga for yin video on Polly’s page right before bed last night…holy stretching!
But it’s good…I feel like life has been spiralling out of control recently and I’ve been skipping the gym and eating crap. Just knowing that I was going to be doing 10 minutes of SOMETHING later kept me a little more on track during the day I think.
- CJ
I was really worried about today as well, and it’s mainly because after work on Monday nights I go to spinning class. I still take that as making time for myself but I did commit to yoga for 10 minutes every day so I woke up bright and early to fit it in. For the first time (EVER) I did just whatever I felt like, no video or anything- it was fun actually. I should do rag doll more often, but I never do (unless its on the video)!
Day 2 – my computer froze and crashed and I knew I only had about 20 minutes before I planned to be in bed so instead of trying to fix it I just lay down on the floor for a couple of minutes (which I just discovered is corpse pose haha), then did hero, child pose, and a couple of others for the full 10 minutes. It’s so nice taking 10 minutes right before bed to decompress instead of watching TV or cleaning right up until bedtime.
Anyone know of a good nighttime/relaxing series?
- CJ
Day 2:
Yes, I do. I find getting any work out in challenging on busy days. I am hoping this challenge helps me to get a better handle on prioritizing my ,me time. I did Polly’s yoga for abs this morning, it was great. I also did a new strength routine and am already feeling the pain, I think there may be another yoga session tonight!
I LOVE ragdoll and crescent.
I totally am nodding my head when you said…didnt think you could fit in 10 minutes. Its 11:40pm and I am just stopping work to do my yoga now.
Day 3 – I followed a night-time yoga series I found in a fitness magazine last night…it started with one move where you lie up against the wall with your feet going up the wall (which I loved and could have fallen asleep like that – the stretch was so nice feeling!) then a twisting/sitting move, childs pose and two more.
I really need to learn the names of these moves haha
It’s such a nice way to wind down from the day though and I find myself going to bed earlier because I don’t start a mindless TV show…I tell myself I’ll clean up, get ready for tomorrow, do my yoga and go to bed…so it’s providing a good structure to my evenings!
- CJ
I’m so glad to see you all getting into it! I hope there are others out there- please let us know how you are doing!
PS- NICKY, thanks for that website, i’m going to check it out tonight!!!
Does anyone else have any good sites to link us to?
Yoga for me is going great- I’ve been able to fit in 10 minutes every day, sometimes in the morning- sometimes at night. I am enjoying making up my own poses at nights and yoga in my pjs!
I am still going with the challenge. I will try to extend my sessions on days when I can next week, but there are some days- particularly Mondays that I don’t think I will be able to extend. I think committing to some time every day is a big enough challenge for me
What I love most about this challenge so far is that it has pushed me to do yoga without any video at all and just make up a routine as I go!
Happened to me on Friday too. I had time, I’m not going to lie and say I couldn’t make 10 minutes I just didn’t want to at all. However, I tend to totally get out of the habit of something and then have the hardest time getting back. Fortunately I did 20 minutes Saturday and Sunday so I guess that wasn’t the case this time, yay!