More year-end reflections: sleep, drink, organization, and mindfulness!

Some more reflections on the questions I asked last January now that my year of yoga has come full circle.  I asked, by doing yoga every day for 360 days, will I:

• Sleep better? Make smarter decisions about what I eat and drink?

On days when I’ve done yoga late, in the 7 to 9 PM window, I think it has helped me get relaxed and sleep ready.  Otherwise, I can’t really say how much it has helped my overall quality/quantity of sleep.  Likewise, I think that I’ve made smarter decisions about what to eat during the day before my yoga practice, but not necessarily afterwards.  Finally, drink. The ~two times I’ve practiced with a hangover this year were not fun. But whether I do yoga or not, I really dislike hangovers and always drink in moderation to avoid them.

Funny or not, this is the quality of my hangover yoga practice. (image registered trademark of YogiBarra)

That said, yoga has served as a great indicator to me of my body’s needs in terms of sleep, food, and drink.  When I get light-headed during the up and downs of sun salutations, that is a great indication that I’m deficient in one of these three necessities, likely hydration.  When my endurance is particularly low, I’m short on rest and/or fuel. And my balance poses REALLY suffer when I’m short on sleep.  So, while the activity of yoga hasn’t changed my patterns of sleeping, eating, and drinking, yoga has made me take notice of where I’m neglecting my body’s needs, and to act accordingly to remedy that situation.

• Be more organized with my time and space? Keep my apartment cleaner so I have room for my yoga mat and to do handstand at the wall? Improve my focus and attention in other parts of my life?

not too shabby...

Why yes, my apartment in general has been more organized to accommodate my daily need for mat space.  And yes, my time has been more organized.  Putting in a physical activity like yoga or running into one’s days is a great organizational block around which to build other activities.  When to get up, when to eat breakfast, when to go running, when to shower, when to make my lunch, and when to head to the office—these things have been informed by my yoga practice.  And in turn, this has helped me focus better in other aspects of my life.  

• Be more mindful of others in my words and actions, even my thoughts? Be kinder to myself, love myself more, forgive myself for not being perfect?

There’s this expression you sometimes hear thrown out in yoga and meditation classes, “turning inward.”  It is true; there is a lot of getting in touch with yourself in yoga, and not always so much getting in touch with the world around you when on the mat.  Additionally, the act of blogging does breed a degree of narcissism.  But I do feel that my time on the mat—particularly when practicing in classes—often does facilitate more awareness of and empathy for the struggles of others, particularly in the physical realm. 

Yup, that's what empathy looks like.

There’s also an innate consideration that typically grows in the yogini the more she practices with others—more patience standing in line to put props back, an eagerness to scoot one’s mat over to make more space, a willingness to partner up with strangers and to spot them in poses in the most helpful way for their particular physical capabilities. I find this mindfulness lingers as I walk out of a yoga class into the “real” world.  Maybe not all day, but for a little while. 

I’ve already written about my mental state and self-esteem after my year of yoga here and here. 

• Levitate????

Aw, a girl can dream!

Namaste!

AND we’re under the 30-day mark…

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!

 

Being present

Blog? What blog?

Hmmm…  It seems to me that, while I’ve been AWESOME at doing yoga for 30 minutes every day for 306 straight days now, my parallel goal to blog regularly and track my yoga minutes ever 10-14 days has totally gone down the toilet.  Oops.  I think I psyche myself out a bit with the blog.  See, I have all sorts of blog ideas, but I want them to be so dang good.  Like, really spectacular investigative yoga blogging.  That kind of thoughtful and thought-provoking work, it takes more than 30 minutes to write.  And I’ve been rather busy writing some earth-shattering copy about memory foam and weather stations and sewing machines during the last month or two.  Ah, excuses, excuses!

Besides, since the wrist injury in August, I’ve gotten out of the habit of writing down exactly how many minutes I’ve spent doing yoga every day on my calendar.  Believe me; I’ve done it every darn day.  I’ve just been lazy about documentation.  But I’m going to try to do some weekly guesstimates below, in the interest of being able to roughly estimate the total amount of time I spent doing yoga this year come New Years Day.

9/5-11: 230 minutes                         10/10-16: 275 minutes

9/12-18: 310 minutes                       10/17-23: 345 minutes

9/19-25: 220 minutes                       10/24-31: 275 minutes       

9/26-10/2: 340 minutes                    11/1-7: 230 minutes           

10/3-9: 340 minutes

Notable practices in the last two months:

• My first class post wrist injury on 9/12, taught by my lovely friend Megan, and captured on video tape to complete her yoga teacher training program.  Yay, Megan!
•  Yoga on the road, part one, September 22-27.  I did yoga in my lovely childhood friend Jamie’s yard in the Astoria hood of Queens, NY for three days.  Then I practiced for three days in Chappaqua, NY, at the home of my brother and sister-in-law, in the room that has since then become 26-days-old niece and nephew! 
• My first handstand post wrist injury, on September 29.  I love them so. 
• Yoga on the road, part two, October 16-17.  I did yoga at my old college pal Liz’s apartment in Portland, which rivals mine in tiny-ness.  There’s nothing like practicing with a hangover…

Cat and Cow--yoga cures for over-imbibing...

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Then there was my practice yesterday morning, my Daylight Savings Time “Fall Back” practice. 

Now, over the past ten months, my home practice has become very comfortable, very routine, and sometimes very boring.  I admit, since my injury in August, my daily practices at home rarely exceed 31-35 minutes.  When I couldn’t do any weight-bearing on my wrist, it was hard to drum up more than 30 minutes of poses and I’d check the clock constantly to find out how much more yoga I had to do.  I didn’t feel like doing yoga daily was a burden, but I definitely had negative feelings about my limitations and the amount of time I’d committed to practicing daily.  I could have embraced the injury as a golden opportunity to meditate more or to cultivate my pranayama practice.  But I have a tendency to let my restless energy dictate.  I’m not going to condemn myself for that—I am what I am.

However, as I healed and my home practice started filling up with downward dog, plank, handstand, and headstand and all those other weight-bearing hand/arm poses again, my clock-watching habit didn’t abate.  I’ve become a pro of the 31-minute yoga practice, barely lying dormant in Savasana for 30 seconds before jumping up off the mat with a quick “Namaste,” eager to go about my day.  In some ways, I feel like my home yoga practice in the last several months has more in common with my showers than my experiences in yoga classes: not a burden, but a necessary part of my day; sometimes luxurious, but generally not; routine.

So yesterday, with the help DST and that extra hour in the day, my morning felt so much more spacious than usual.  And that spacious feeling carried over to my yoga practice.  I was doing yoga “earlier” than I usually do on a Sunday morning, because I woke up “earlier” than usual.  I felt the freedom to linger in forward bends longer, to hold stretches and poses longer, to play with different poses than usual, to practice pranayama even.  I was engaging with my yoga with more intention and intimacy than I have in my home practice since before Labor Day.  It was an incredibly refreshing home practice—sublime.

In the Anusara yoga classes I attend, after we chant Om three times and the Anusara invocation in Sanskrit, the teacher always asks us to bow our heads towards our hearts and to set an intention for our practice before we release our hands, open our eyes, and start moving.  The intentions that I set in this pause are always attuned to my current physical, emotional, and spiritual status and needs.  If my heart is feeling tender, I set an intention to be gentle and patient with myself and to approach poses from a place of openness, without self criticism, and with no expectations except that I attempt poses to the best of my ability in that moment of that day.  If my heart is feeling joyous, my intention may be to express that feeling in my practice, to see how far my limbs can expand, to push the edge just a little bit further.

I googled "Be Present" and got Ernest Hemingway kicking a can.

I would like to set an intention for my home practice in the next 54 days.  Each time I step onto my mat, I will take the time to tune into where my body, mind, and heart are, how they are doing and what they need from yoga that day—set a daily intention, just like in class.  Then I will actively focus in my practice on meeting that intention and filling those needs, abandoning distracting thoughts about my schedule, work, food, and relationships until I am off the mat.  Lastly, I will move the clock so it is out of my line of sight on the mat.

I also hereby set an intention to blog more as I head into the last stretch of this journey!

Namaste!