Actually, we're under the 24-day mark. Or I am. My 360 days of Adho Mukha Svanasana is officially winding down. Today marks my 336 straight day of yoga practice. The end of the tunnel is in sight, though honestly, this journey has never felt anything like an endless tunnel. Predictably, the first month was the hardest, because it takes time to adjust to a new daily time commitment. Now, it is so automatic and normal, that I’m almost scared to go that minimum 30 minutes of yoga a day.
When I took on this challenge in January, I had a big list of questions about what I might experience by doing yoga every day. Over the next three+ weeks, I want to revisit some of those questions here in the bloggity-blog. You can read my initial two blog posts with ALL of those questions here and here. One caveat: it is impossible to know how much of any change I’ve undergone in the last 336 days has been a result specifically of doing yoga—in many cases, yoga is one of many things that may have facilitated a change. The best way to test daily yoga’s effect on me would be to stop doing yoga every day, and even then, NOT doing yoga would likely be one of many things that might facilitate a change. Still, I want to try to answer my questions to gauge the impact of this year-long experience! So let’s get started with the mother of all questions:
- After a year of daily yoga practice, will I feel happier? More balanced and patient? Calmer? Less anxious?
Wow. This is really hard to answer. See, when I began this process, I had already begun a kind of remarkable transformation in terms of my mental health. Seriously, if you were to turn back the clock and look at me not 360 days, but 720 days ago, you would think you were looking at my twin sister: my totally depressed, anxious, high-strung, impatient twin sister. My Debbie Downer twin could not have committed to practicing yoga every single day, no matter how much she already loved yoga and how often she did yoga.
So, in the year leading up to beginning my yoga 360, I made a lot of tough, painful decisions, took some big risks, and began to change my life on many, many fronts. It was a really hard year, but I got through it and came out a much stronger, smarter, healthier person.
When 2010 began, I had only recently begun to feel like I was standing on solid ground, or rather like I could keep my footing on the ever-shifting ground below me. I was feeling happier than I had in a really long time. I felt only a shadow of the perpetual anxiety that had been clouding my thoughts and actions for the majority of my adult life. I was just getting the idea of what a balanced life might feel like, that it was something I could actually have, that it was something I wanted. Basically, I was finally in a place where I felt capable of truly committing to something long term; thus began my year of yoga.
I don’t know if doing yoga every day has made me any happier than I was last December. But it definitely has not made me LESS happy. Yes, I’ve had days this year when I’ve felt like nothing good would ever happen to me again, days when I’ve felt like anxiety was ripping me up inside. But I’ve also had days this year when I’ve felt unadulterated joy and satisfaction that I’m alive, days when my mind can’t recall what it is to worry about something. On most days of this past year, though, I haven’t been extremely sad or happy, but fine, okay-to-good, more or less satisfied. I think this is what it looks like to have a balanced life.
I absolutely believe that my yoga has helped me sustain this balance in my life. If I come to my mat in a ridiculously giddy mood, I generally find myself settling down over the course of my practice, reigning in my happiness a bit so that I may maintain it longer, and so that it isn’t such a shock to my system when something undesirable happens. Likewise, if I come to my mat in a real foul mood, my practice helps redirect my focus: things might suck, but at that moment, I’m paying attention to my balance. The brief reprieve from my troubles that yoga’s temporary shift in focus provides always leaves me calmer and better prepared to face what ever has my panties in a bunch. Yoga evens my keel when I’m tipping too much to one side of the other. Most days, my practice mirrors and affirms my fine, more-or-less satisfied mental space, like breathing or blinking. It is a part of what keeps me regular.
So whether or not daily yoga this year has made me MORE anything, it definitely was involved in helping me STAY happy, calm, patient, and balanced.
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Minutes for the accountability police. Yes, practiced every day. Here's the rough round up:
11/8-11/14: 305
11/15-11/21: 315
11/22-11/28: 235
11/29-12/7: 285
Namaste!
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