Practice yoga 30 times in 30 days

I started on Winter Solstice. As always, I do this with others at VF

I started with Barbara Benagh’s AM/PM Yoga

I hope to become more flexible in body and mind!

Namaste!

I apologize for not having posted the follow-up. Life has been busy, tough and I kind of forgot. But I wrote this wrap-up report at VF, my favorite fitness forum and I am copying and pasting it from there. I posted it there on 2/23/2008.

This is my second Sadhana. I officially finished it on 17th, but the “musing” took this long. This is one of the tougher periods in my life. Surprisingly, I had no emotional meltdowns during any practice in contrast to last year when I had cried for some silly reason.. hurt by some insensitivity of a friend. In the grand scheme of things, it was no big deal. But I am surprised at how relatively calm I am this year..perhaps I am finally “growed” up.

Focus: Just doing Yoga everyday.

I was doing Yoga fairly regularly before the Sadhana due to ongoing low back issues.

I started Sadhana on 12/21/07. Had a break in between when I traveled to India. I completed 40 days, but I did miss 5 days… so basically I reached 40 days 45 days after starting my Sadhana (not including my India trip). Well, this is the best I can realistically ever do.

Improvements over last year: I am able to easily do Yoga practices longer than 45 minutes. Last year I was just managing 30 minutes. I don’t mean that poses got easier, I am not fidgeting after 30 mins wanting to stop.

What did I learn: I figured out I am inflexible to varying degrees almost everywhere. And that is OK with me. More than learning, I should say I ‘unlearned’. My big thing is not to push myself and get into poses the wrong way… eg, rounding of back in forward bends. I noticed that I was doing that in cradle stretch when I was doing Backyard as well as Tilak’s Altar. The other big thing is trying to breathe through the practice. I did well for the most part, paying attention to my breath, somehow towards the last few practices, it was hard for me to keep that focus on breath.

My experience so far:

I started doing Yoga as a stretching component when I started running with Cardiocoach. I am thankful to Yoga cross-trainers (these are people I check-in with at VF every week to talk about our fitness activities. They have encyclopedic knowledge when it comes to Yoga). It was their chatter that hugely influenced me and guided me towards Yoga.

The first year, I was eager to do poses, effortlessly did Ardha Chandrasana in my first class and was always eager to try hard poses.

Where I am now:
I cannot do Ardha Chandrasana easily, sometimes I can, sometimes I cannot.
I am not in a hurry to do the poses wrong anymore. I enjoy slower, gentle Yoga, poses with longer holds ( even when I cannot hold it long). Fast Vinyasa just does not work for me. I need to figure out how to best optimize a pose for me and this takes several tries, several minutes in poses for me. Now, that is the big reason why Barbara Benagh clicked with me. It was not love at first try. I started with YFSR and repeatedly did the low back and hip and sacrum segments… but initially I felt it was slow, I was impatient and my hamstring inflexibility made it unbearable to do these sections day after day. But I had great faith in all of you ( I am referring to the friends at videofitness who extolled its virtues). I was using YFSR before I started the Sadhana and I was bit tired of the reclining sections by that point. So, I tried a variety of different DVDs during the Sadhana. This is how my final breakdown looks:

Barbara Benagh: 18 (all YFSR)
Erich Schiffmann 5 ( 4 BB + 1 Gentle Yoga mp3)
Gary Kraftsow: 6 (low back viniyoga)
Lillah Schwartz: 2 (Freedom from back pain)
Darlene Bink: 2 (From the ground up)
Tilak Pyle 1
Mary Pappas: 1 (Y for weight loss)
Raji Thron: 2 (Gentle series)
Rodney Yee 1 Conditioning for athletes)
Peggy Cappy: 2
Sudhakar Kem McRAe 1
Danica McKellar 1
Yoga radiance 2
ETA
Hips and hamstrings 1

( Total no. of practices > 40 as I did two practices on some days )

Realistically, I don’t think I will be able to do Yoga everyday, but I hope to incorporate more and more into my routine.

I thank my Yogini friends at VF, they have been wonderful in terms of their input. I certainly would not have been this committed but for them.

In closing, all I can say is Robert Frost’s famous words: “Miles to go before I get good at Yoga”, but the journey is fun.

Since, it has been a few months, I can also update I actually do Yoga regularly (at least 4 out of the 7 days). It is usually short 30 minute practices.

So, I am happy to cross of this goal from my list as I know I will practice regularly now. I will try to add hyperlinks to some DVD I mentioned. I am currently into Barbara Benagh. I must warn that it might not work for everyone as she is slow and deliberate, but if you really listen to her and follow the instructions, you will find the pose so much more enhanced than what you were doing before, at least that is my personal experience.

NAMASTE!

Well, yet another go at this goal again. I am planning on doing at least a 30 min session everyday.. focus will be restorative Yoga (mostly). I will traveling a bit next month, but besides that, I hope to stick to this for the next few days. I will not update here everyday, but perhaps a weekly entry or may be I will follow Librarian’s method.

Today was Yoga for stress relief : Low back section and evening revival.

Namaste!

Thank you AY for the invite here.

As promised here, I am posting this final wrap up . In retrospect, I am quite happy with my progress. I love all aspects of Yoga: the gentle physical, the spiritual and the gymnastic and more powerful Yoga.. all of them. I love Group OM chanting, I can feel the energy of the reverberation of our collective chanting, it truly is enchanting to me. We haven’t done it lately, I think I will request it at my next class.

I plan to revisit this goal again next year ( oh yeah, don’t roll your eyes.. it will be here before we know it :)). I started a 40 -day Sadhana at VF and here is the wrap up I posted there:

My Sadhana wrap up:

I am a bit sad to report that I did not do Yoga every day. My spreadsheet tally:

30/40 days. ( the Sadhana at VF was 40 days).

The bright side: even 30/40 seems like an accomplishment to me, I don’t think I would have achieved it but for this Sadhana

What did I learn

1. I much prefer live class over DVD. Each class is different and even though my Yoga teacher seems a bit aggressive in pose correction, she really adds some unique and challenging pose. For eg., one day we did this balance pose where the leg is held behind like in half moon, but both hands on the floor, then I extended the leg sideways with the toes pointing to the front. I know one of you will come with the correct name for this pose.
I like her emphasis on at least a 5-breath count , for I still don’t have this breathing thing coordinated. I also like the positive affirmations that she makes at the end of classes by way of reading snippets from various books. I remember she read from Moving Into stillness.

2. I prefer morning practices over evening. For me evening usually means around 11 ‘o clock and I don’t enjoy Power Yoga at that time.

3. I have fallen in love with triangle pose. I am constantly striving to make my triangle pose better, mentally I keep thinking my heart is opening.

4. The realization that I absolutely am bad at backbends followed by forward bends..

5. I cannot still intuit much from my body, but I am more open to adjusting myself in search of what the pose should be.. I am constantly trying to improve my downdog.

6. The basic warrior poses itself amaze me because I am always experimenting with various ways of executing them correctly.

7. I liked the way I got into prayer twist when I did it with Alan Finger in YZ: Flexibility and stress release. I seem to get the best out of this pose following his method.

8. I feel a need to constantly preview and re-view the DVDs to understand a pose better.

9. I discovered that I loved Rodney Yee’s Yoga for Energy after I got past my initial dislike of his Speedo appearance.

10. While I liked Y for Energy, I am currently at a level where Vinyasa is not best suited for my practice. I need to linger in poses, understand it better before I can progress to Vinyasa flows.

11. The state of mind that I start out with has an incredible bearing on my practice. I had two emotional practices with Altar of the heart. I feel very happy for emotional release of any sort, I feel liberated.

12. Despite being a Nouveau Yogini, I find myself wanting to buy all the DVDs that you all talk about( the Yoginis at VF are erudite and very advanced in terms of Yoga practice and one is tempted to buy anything they endorse).

13. I still like Baron the best. I feel like I am improving when I do Yoga with him. Of course, one reason is that I have more Baron DVDs than any other and the other being that most of them are 30—35 minutes which I can manage to squeeze in. I do not like breaking up longer practices in general, though I do do it at times.

14. 15 minutes is not satisfying to me, but longer than 45 minutes seems too long to keep my mind focussed.

NAMASTE!

My 43rd third day came and went on Monday. I had no time to update here. But, my back of the envelope calculation remained just that.. did not translate to real life.

Here is a run down of practices since my last post:

2/5/2007 35 minutes Yoga Zone: Stretching for felxibility

2/8/2007 1 hour Power Yoga class in gym

2/10/2007 30 minutes Unlocking athletic power

2/11/2007 45 minutes Yoga conditioning for athletes

So total tally 32/43.. so did not quite make it.

There was a brief period where I desperately wanted to achieve this, the little school girl, have to get ‘A’ grade mentality sneaking in, but life is a very powerful teacher. I could not put this ahead of my responsibilities as a bread winner, ahead of my maternal responsibilites that include reading to my child and getting him to sleep, ahead of my domestic responsibilities. Even though I rationalized.. just one week of doing this, ignore the others for this week, I just could not do it. As I was folding clothes at 2 AM one night wondering if I should do Yoga, I looked at the pile of clothes still lying on the floor unfolded, at the same time mentally tabulating the training runs I have missed for my half marathon, it became clear to me. I was able to do midnight practices when I stayed up late at night, but when I went to read to my child and fell asleep due to sheer exhaustion, it did not make sense to wake up at 2 AM and do Yoga. I somehow could not practice Yoga when I realized going into a practice that I was doing it to make the numbers add up.. it just did not feel right to me. S0, here I am, having taken a stab at this goal. I am leaving this goal unfinished for now, but I will tackle it again.. say like doing a makeup exam :).

I will be back for a final wrap up, but for now.. adios Yogis and Yoginis.

is all I can say.

Since the last report:
2/5/2007: Yoga zone: Stretching for flexibility, 35 min

This morning I shut the alarm off at 4.30 AM and 6 AM.( Well, I was absolutley beat). I just needed to nourish my body with sleep. Then lay in the bed for 10 minutes with my legs in Badakonasana..does that COUNT.. MAY BE I CAN CALL IT ‘BED’AKONASANA..

(If that counts, I actually have done several of those practices).

2/6/2007: On tap, Unlocking Athletic Power..

So, did not get to requisite 2 practices a day. I dunno, I am going to keep plugging away, will see where I stand on 43rd day.

So sorry Ana.. I will still try, but realistically, it seems to be slipping, slipping..time keeps on slipping , slipping into the future..

Feb 12, 07: 43 rd day.
Have to finish 43 practices ( oh yes, don’t hold me accountable for 30/30, I always thought I was 43/43 :))
Go to excel spreadsheet to tally, to see if there is a way I can pull the impossible off..

Last post: Jan 21. At that point, 18/43 ..already 2 behind.

1/21/2007 55 minutes Altar of the heart Tilak Pyle

Emotional practice, loved his opening sentences, loved the first swinging of arms, like 5 Tibetan ritual.

1/22/2007 38 minutes Yoga Zone: Stretching for flexibility, total body toning

1/27/2007 30 minutes Unlocking atheletic power Baron

1/31/2007 30 minutes Power Yoga: The Initial Challenge Level 1 Baron

2/2/2007 45 minutes Live class Ava Nice class, all kinds of newish postures
2/3/2007 30 minutes Unlocking athletic power Baron

2/3/2007 25 minutes Yoga conditioning for athletes Yoga Rodney
2/4/2007 25 minutes Eoinn’s Quickie Have to do it once more before deciding that I really like it

Well, life happened. Some days, I just slept, could not get to the midnight practice, just crashed into bed with my child, sometimes there was no room to fit it in.
My spread-sheet entry also has not been up to date. I know I did more than what is there on my spread sheet.

So conservatively adding 2 more practices ( gosh.. this whole thing seems so unYogic of me)... come on team mates, please let me try.. Gracias.

OK, 28/35. So that leaves me with 7 practices to make up in the remaining 8 days.. hmm.. I am gonna try. I will definitely get one more in today, but 2 everyday from now on. Like, I said, I will keep my eyes on my goal.

Amazon sale for fitness DVDs. I get all the scoop from my favorite fitness forum

I placed an order for Bryan Kest

For international users, please remember most DVDs are region 1. Aatmiya can tell more.. she seems to be able to use most of them.

May be I should stop using such titles.. seems to be increasing in number. In any case, I laughed at my other title ,”The first slip”. I was reminded of my teenage days of listening to Cricket commentary. I really did not understand it when I first started to listen to it, but my father and brother would be up at weird hours in the night trying to catch it and the excitement in the commentator’s voice was enough to get me hooked. I don’t remember if Gavaskar was on first slip or the second slip, but I remember bugging my brother.. what is a ‘slip’. The Indian contigent here will understand what I am telling. For the rest of you, it is a field placement position behind the batsman in the game “Cricket”. I used to cheer for Gavaskar primarily because he was short and I felt like I had to support my fellow brethren.. :). Well, this should make up for my lack of practice report on the 18th. Here goes the last three days in reverse:

Jan. 20, 2007: 50 minutes Yoga conditioning for athletes by Rodney Yee. Excellent DVD. The DVD gives one the option of selecting from a variety of short segments for specific-sports ( running, tennis, etc.), or workout geared towards Strength or flexibility. I chose the one for flexibility. I have posted the link before, but I will do it again as there are several newcomers here:

YCFA
Unfortunately Amazon does not carry the DVD version now ( it was there 2 weeks ago when I looked). I bought it from gaiam.

Jan.19, 2007: 22 minutes of Yoga for energy with Rodney Yee. Love this one also. But a weird Yoga session in that I was up at 3 AM after having pulled an all nighter the previous day and crashed the subsequent day. I got out of bed at 4AM and got stuck to the computer till about 5.30 ish. Then, I hung around on the couch because it was cold and was so tempted to go back and snuggle with my lil one ( Ebear justified Snuggle Yoga). WELL, i DID 22 MINUTES, then I wanted to watch the rest of the Vinyasa and watch I did for a few seconds, before I fell asleep on the couch.

Jan 18, 2007: Second slip. Could not keep eyes open and fell asleep due to the allnighter I pulled.

Lessons learned ( which I learn over and over again): It does not matter that the title reads ‘Yoga for energy”.. if my body did not get the required nourishment in terms of food and sleep, it just cannot function.

Sigh: 2 behind. I will make it up, I hope.

18/43… 2 to makeup.

Last 3 in reverse order:

01/17/07: 35 minutes of Tilak Pyle’s Altar of the heart.
I was toying around looking at the DVDs this morning wondering which one to do, pulled out a Baron one, then for some reason, put it back and pulled out Altar of the Heart which was actually misplaced in a different rack. Just the medicine I needed today for my emotionally-confused state. I repeated the first seated forward bend three times because I cried the first time I put my head down, smiled the third time. My euphoria yesterday during the day later turned to an exact opposite last night. It was not a very centered practice, but one that allowed me to say..let go, let go, please give for the joy of giving, please don’t expect anything else, it is hard for me in this instance.I couldn’t balance well, for I was in and out in mind space: calm one minute, agitated the next. But, I was mindful of balance, what it is supposed to mean in life. I did feel better at the end of the practice.

01/16/07: Emotionally, my heart was just not in it. I could not ask the midnight warrioress to plod on, I did not feel like doing it just so I could mark it off on my calendar and when my child cried for me, I just called it quits and went to sleep next to him.

01/15/07: Second part of Yoga Zone: Stretching for flexibility. I was determined to get to the second part and I did. I really liked it… using the principles of opposition.

16/43… one behind

Just want to send waves to all. Keep it up, I don’t have any cheers to give, so here is loads of cosmic cheer :)