January Yoga Challenge: Update & What I’ve Learned So Far
So… can I have a do-over?
My plans to do yoga every day in January went REALLY well… for the first four days. Then I got totally taken out by the Headache of Doom for a couple of days, and things kinda went downhill from there. (In case you’re curious, January involved that crazy tension headache/possible migraine, a 2 day vomiting spree, 2 dentist appointments to get teeth extracted, and 3 trips to the vet to fix up 2 very sick cats. Oh, and my phone died and had to be replaced. Not the best start to a year I’ve ever had!)
As you can probably guess, once I got off track, getting back on felt next to impossible. It’s a total shame, too, since extra yoga was probably exactly what I needed during such a crazy month! I did learn a few things from my epic fail, though, so I’m ready to try again this month!
What I’ve Learned:
- Putting my yoga practice off until nighttime does NOT work for me. I need to make sure to do it either in the morning or early afternoon, or I either get too wrapped up in what I’m working on or too flippin’ tired to drag myself to the mat.
- I work better with a plan than winging what I’ll do each day. I stuck with it so much better last year when I did Gaia’s yoga guide than when I had to pick something each day. I’ve made myself a list of videos that I want to do throughout Feb, with a mix of easy and harder practices so I can choose from whichever category I’m feeling that day. I think that having some freedom to pick from around a dozen choices will work for me, since it means a little bit of choice, but not 20 minutes spent scrolling through every video ever trying to decide!
- I also need a backup plan. I’d planned to use the Gaia app on my Kindle Fire for most of m practices, since it’s way easier to see than my little iPhone screen, but doesn’t have the lag that my poor overworked laptop tends to have. (And it’s a law – the video will ALWAYS freeze up just when you’re in an impossible to hold position!) However, right after I renewed my account, the app stopped letting me log in and it took almost all month to get a repl from customer service, who told me that when they changed their name from Gaiam TV, they temporarily eliminated the Kindle app. Uhh, thanks for the heads-up? I usually love them because their subscription price is reasonable and they have such a huge selection of videos, but this was a pretty big fail. I still have my subscription for Feb, so I’ll be doing my best with just the laptop to view them on!
Anyway, I just wanted to share, since the learning process is rarely pretty and we tend to only hear about people’s successes when it comes to building new habits. Hopefully February’s Yoga Challenge Updates will be much more successful!
