Note to self: yoga should not be a chore.

Well, it shouldn't, right?

This kind of outlook is one of the challenges I've bumped into thus far in my 360 days of yoga quest. There are days, like today, where I wake up, feel kinda of blech physically and blah mentally, and the prospect of doing yoga doesn't exactly make my heart sing. It feels like something I "have to do." So, when I was telling a friend about what my day looked like recently, I said something like: "I want to spend a little time working the office, and I need to spend some time cleaning at home, and I've have to do my yoga still." He remarked that the way I was talking about yoga made it sound like this dreaded chore, and that seemed kind of contrary to why I am trying to do yoga for 360 days in the first place.

And he's right. When devising this yoga challenge for myself, I did not seek to add a daily chore to my life. I sought to add daily joy and calm and movement. But I AM human. Of course, when I wake up with a migraine, I'm not going to skip to my yoga mat. And I've woken up with two migraines this week--which is usually the maximum amount of migraines I have in a month. With any luck, I won't have another one for four weeks. However, I still have to get through today. The headache is fading, but I feel a little weak overall, unfocused, and sort of nauseous. I have yet to do yoga today. When I do, I know to avoid a lot of Uttanasana and to skip the inversions all together: I want to minimize poses that send blood rushing to the head. And I'm probably not going to want to hold Utkatasana for very long today because of my nausea. Today is a day for a gentle yoga practice, a restorative yoga practice.

I know that I am the one who decides what qualifies as a day's yoga practice in my challenge. Some people would craft flexible rules for themselves, rules that bend all sorts of ways so that they don't fail. Now I don't want to fail, but I'm kind of a hard a** with myself. I am writing down how much time I spend doing yoga every day, and on days when I'm crafting my own pose sequence, I'm timing it and making sure I keep at it for over 30 minutes. Which is great! But I also have this idea in my head that I'm "cheating" if I spend a day's practice just doing gentle yoga stretches or restorative poses or doing more meditation or breath work. If I really want to practice yoga though, I absolutely have to let go of the idea that I have to break a sweat or feel my muscles burning in my daily practice. Burning calories is not yoga!!!

In fact, only one of the 8 limbs of yoga, as laid out in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, has anything to do with poses and "exercise" at all--the third limb, Asana, which regards body postures. The literal meaning of the word Asana is not "pose" however. It is "seat," often used in the context of a seated position one can comfortably maintain for meditation. As for the other 7 limbs of yoga, they cover morality, personal observances, control of breath, control of the senses, cultivating inner perceptual awareness, meditation on the Divine, and union with the divine. While I may discuss these more at a later date, I refer you to Wikipedia for now!

My point is: with so little importance given to the sweating buckets aspect of yoga, I really must give more attention to the other aspects of yoga. Especially on days like today: practicing Pranayama (breath exercises) and Dhyana (meditation) may actually help alleviate my migraine, and they definitely won't make me feel worse. Focusing on these other limbs of yoga aren't cheating. However, if I focused only on Asanas, I would be cheating myself.

"Meditate, you must. Yes, hmmm."

Namaste!