30 Days of Yoga

I'm now three days in to a 30-day yoga challenge that I sort of fell into accidentally.

Since I quit going to the gym and paying for a personal trainer, I've been intending to work out more at home. This worked great for a little while. I was riding my bike to work and going for long rides on the weekends. But then summer happened and my desire to go outside went away. I lifted weights in our basement a few times, but nothing ever really stuck. It's too easy to have a beer with dinner or spend the night watching TV or reading instead.

With the house to myself, I decided to start looking into exercise videos available online. The thing I liked most about my personal trainer was that I had someone telling me what to do. I'm not great at putting together workouts for myself. It's too easy to decide halfway through to skip that extra set or just blow off legs completely. But with a video, there's a fixed time and routine, and it's easier to have someone doing it along with you.

There used to be a ton on Netflix, but they seem to have all been removed as part of Netflix's changing business model. So I ended up on YouTube looking at yoga videos. I found a series called Yoga with Adriene that had a promising looking challenge. It's aimed at beginners, and she offers tons of modifications and encouragement. The routines are all different and range in length from 10 to 30 minutes.

This isn't about getting into super shape right away. It's about baby steps. Establishing a routine. I want to get in the habit of doing ~30 minutes of yoga every day, and this seems like a good way to do that.

I've had a contentious relationship with yoga in the past. I think it's mostly the group classes, where everyone seems leagues ahead of me. As soon as I fail a pose, I get embarrassed and half the time that leads to me leaving early. Then I don't go back. And it's just a stupid cycle. But in the privacy of my own home, that embarrassment is gone. I can wobble and fall and get right back up and try again without getting strange looks from anyone.

It would be nice to have a mirror to check my body, but the truth is that my ballet training is kicking in pretty nicely. I can tell pretty easily when my hips are square, when my legs are too far apart, when I'm not standing up straight, when my weight isn't properly distributed. I'm still unsure about some poses, but I think that has more to do with my lack of flexibility. I'd really like someone to help me figure out Downward Dog, especially since it's such a popular pose. I'm not at all convinced I'm doing it right.

Still, I'm doing better with these videos than I expected to. I don't quite have the core strength needed for standing on one leg for an extended period of time or the flexibility necessary to actually flow into and out of lunges. But I'll get there. In the meantime the exercise has been a nice mix of relaxing and strenuous. Which is to say that I'm always nicely relaxed while I'm doing it and pleasantly sore the next day.

At this point I'm thinking that when I finish the 30 days, I may just go back to the beginning and start over. Hopefully I'll do better on some of the earlier exercises. For now I'm just taking baby steps towards strength and flexibility. Not that I have high hopes. If ten years of ballet didn't give me the ability to touch my toes, I doubt yoga will. At least I know I'll get stronger.