Chronicles of a woman on her quest to practice yoga for 360 straight days. Will she be transformed by a daily yoga quota of 30+ minutes? What insights will come to her whilst in Downward-Facing Dog?
In this post, I continue to reflect on this list of questions I posed when I first began this project, 348 days ago. I asked, after a year of daily yoga practice, will I:
Grow a few centimeters in height?
Okay, so to assess whether I grew any in height, I'm employing a highly unscientific method of standing shoeless against a wall, attempting to draw a pencil line in the exact right place at the top of my head, and then using measuring tape to figure the distance from pencil mark to floor. This process is made all the more unscientific by the fact that I didn't measure myself at the beginning of the year. On my driver's license, it says I'm 5 foot 6 inches tall, but the last time I got measured at the doctor's office proved that I am one of those people who round up to seem taller. According to the doctor, I was more like 5 foot 5-1/2 inches tall. ANYWAY, this morning, I measured myself as 5 foot 6-1/8 inches tall. Hmmm.... Did my pencil mark aim too high? Was I slouching at the doctor's office? Or did I grow a little bit? We'll never know for sure.
Nope, still too short for Splash Mountain!
I also asked, after a year of daily yoga practice, will I:
Look different--be slimmer or have more muscle bulk? Be stronger in my core? Be more stable in my pelvis? Have better posture/alignment? Develop those tiny muscles in my inner hips and the arches of my feet to protect my knees and to help stave off genetic physical ailments? Reduce the frequency of migraines? Improve my circulation? Achieve super healthy blood pressure readings?
Let me start by saying that this here body of mine has served me pretty well during my year of yoga. Yes, I've incurred some injuries. I'm happy to report that none of them have been incurred practicing yoga. I can't put a value on how many injuries I may have avoided by practicing yoga or staved off "genetic physical ailments," but I know that stretching my limbs and building muscle tone protects me a lot when I do high impact aerobic activities, like running, and even doing little things like getting into my car from a funny angle. The body can get hurt in really small, ridiculous ways. Trust me, I once re-sprained my ankle trying on a ski boot
Has my body changed? Of course it has, the body is always changing. Lately, I feel like my core is kind of weak, but it was super strong in June. It is winter after all, and my body and energy cycles just like the seasons. People have remarked on my fantastic posture over the year, but alignment and keeping my pelvis stabilized seem like things that need lifelong attention and continual adjustments. I don't know if yoga has helped prevent any migraines, though gentle yoga has been soothing when I've had one. Circulation? Sure, while I'm actually practicing, but in general? Who knows? And my blood pressure readings, they were pretty dang healthy before this year began, and they still are.
So now for the million-dollar question: do I look different, slimmer or have more muscle bulk? Honestly.... I think I look pretty much the same as I did last January. My clothing sizes haven't changed. My weight has fluctuated within the same 5-pound window all year. That said, my body has never been in as great shape as it has been at times this year. Particularly in the spring and summer months. I definitely am stronger than I was last December, even if my core is a little wimpy at present.
And here's the real triumph: I have never felt so secure with this body as is as I have this year. And sexy. This body of mine is strong and sexy and I'm so happy to live in it. The time I spend every day doing yoga allows me to witness and appreciate my body, while it also puts me in touch with what my body needs and what it likes to keep it healthy and happy. Even when my muscles burn like crazy from holding a challenging pose, yoga feels like the most incredible gift to my body.
Maybe I do look different. Maybe I do stand taller. Maybe the incredible confidence and respect I've developed for my body on the inside has transformed how I appear on the outside, in ways that have nothing to do with slimness, muscle mass, or the number on the scale.
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.
