Tag Archives: 40 days

40 Days of Yoga and Well-being challenge at Thrive

Crunk time in my 40-​​day yoga challenge

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve noticed that it’s get­ting a lot harder to fit in all the com­po­nents of the 40-​​day chal­lenge, espe­cially the 20-​​minute med­i­ta­tion twice a day. It’s just harder to bite off that slice of time and block out all other activ­i­ties until I come out of it. The 20-​​minute length is also pump­ing against the lim­its of my attention span.

The other issue is that I’ve found that I’ve been putting some tasks on the back-​​burner to meet my chal­lenge tar­gets. The first cou­ple of weeks, I let things slide. Now I find that the back­log is demand­ing for my atten­tion. And then, there are the unfore­seen emer­gen­cies that throw every­thing out the win­dow (too many of those have been hap­pen­ing recently) — but that pre­cisely when I need a mind­ful­ness practice.

Third week of my yoga challenge

Posted on by

I have not had much free time to post about my progress. That’s what hap­pens when I focus on prac­tic­ing yoga, pranayama, med­i­ta­tion and mind­ful liv­ing, all while hold­ing down a 9-​​5 job and bal­anc­ing fam­ily life. Some things get squeezed off the sched­ule. Or there just is not enough men­tal energy to sit down and digest the whole vinyasa of life. Rather than being some­thing like a retreat (single-​​minded con­cen­tra­tion) or a boot­camp, it’s more a ques­tion of con­sciously inter­weav­ing the yoga-​​plus with my daily routine.

Ice and fire

Last week­end, I did not take any classes. On Sat­ur­day, all class at Thrive Yoga were can­celled because we had our first snow/​ice/​slush/​rain event of the win­ter and no one could make any plans overnight. Then, on Sun­day, I went to class, but we got no fur­ther than the open­ing chants when we smelled burn­ing plas­tic. Out in the hall­way, a can­dle had some­how lit up some per­sonal belong­ings that may have been hung too close (or fallen on the can­dle or what­ever). Flames were climb­ing the walls, and smoke cov­ered the ceil­ing. Fire alarms went off. Luck­ily, there were lots of blan­kets to throw on the fire and it was brought under con­trol quickly. We hauled the smol­der­ing debris out­side. Susan and Dave got to explain to the Fire Depart­ment how it all hap­pened. Iron­i­cally, a hook-​​and-​​ladder truck, plus an ambu­lance, a fire truck and assorted cops, arrived to deal with a fire in a lower level/​basement of a strip mall. I decided to go to the gym to do some aer­o­bic exer­cise. Thrive Yoga reopened later in the after­noon so there was no seri­ous dam­age done. My yoga ses­sions that week­end were all at home, but I did get back to Thrive for a class on Mon­day evening.

Out­side leverage

Photo: hands are placed on the back of a supline yogini

Some­times another per­son can help disi­pate the stress that seaps into the back

It was unfor­tu­nate that I did not get to any classes over the week­end because I had had my first mas­sage ther­apy ses­sion in over a month, and wanted to gauge how my body would respond on the mat. Howard Rontal had been trav­el­ing over the Hol­i­days so we took a break, and I’ve cut back from once a week to twice a month. For the first ses­sion, we started work­ing from the feet up, and made it up to my ham­strings. My tis­sues had tight­ened up sub­stan­tially over the past month, despite my own attempts at self-​​massage, and we needed the full hour to peel away the super­fi­cial lay­ers of ten­sion. I am look­ing for­ward to com­bin­ing the rig­ors of my 40-​​day chal­lenge with body­work. In my classes since the ther­apy, I can tell that there are some sharp con­trast between mus­cles that I have habit­u­ally used (and overused) in my prac­tice and more raw tis­sues that have been opened up by the ther­apy session.

Second week of my 40-​​day yoga challenge

Posted on by

More pre­cisely, the sec­ond week is draw­ing to a close.

I missed yoga classes on Tues­day and today because of other com­mit­ments. But I did fit in a restora­tive prac­tice on those evenings. The biggest rev­e­la­tion for me was see­ing the accu­mu­la­tive pay­off of reg­u­lar prac­tice. On Sat­ur­day, in Susan Bowen’s 2/​3 vinyasa flow class, she had us do wheel pose five times. I was able to get up for each one. Even more sur­pris­ing, I did not do a pre­lim­i­nary step of going from bridge pose (Setu Bandha Sar­van­gasana)  to wheel sup­port­ing some weight on my head and then in full wheel (Urd­hva Dha­nurasana). I did a bridge in which I made sure that my legs were doing all the work of sus­tain­ing the pose, my back was arched and then I placed my hands on the mat by my ears and pushed straight up. It was a smooth move­ment. In the past, the half-​​way head on the mat mod­i­fi­ca­tion seemed to jam my neck into my shoul­der gir­dle, mak­ing it much harder to push up into full wheel. I could feel the pres­sure on my spine.

I had seen this trick done by Sadie Nar­dini prob­a­bly in a YouTube video. I had been able to do it a cou­ple of times, but then my prac­tice got com­pletely dis­rupted and I lost the strength to push up. Doing it on Sat­ur­day just showed me that I had recov­ered enough to strength and improve my spinal flex­i­bil­ity to han­dle this power move into wheel.

But I’m already there!

Posted on by

Last night I went to a hot vinyasa class and let the sweat pour. It’s amaz­ing how a phys­i­cal purg­ing can wring out all the emo­tional tox­ins as well. No yoga class today because I couldn’t get home early enough to grab the restora­tive class at Thrive Yoga. I could not get to the gym as planned because of a mix-​​up on the sched­ul­ing of our car.

I’ve come to real­ize that I already have the right mind­set for the 40-​​day chal­lenge; it’s just a mat­ter of mak­ing time to go to as many classes as pos­si­ble. My daily rou­tines include   mind­ful­ness, med­i­ta­tion, breath work, restora­tive yoga and ther­a­peu­tic yoga. Just qui­et­ing my mind enough to pre­pare my body for bed is a kind of stag­gered vinyasa in which I shift into a more rest­ful rhythm. What I will get out of the 40-​​day chal­lenge is the accu­mu­la­tive impact of step­ping up the fre­quency of attend­ing class, which are almost always more phys­i­cally demand­ing than a yoga ses­sion at home.

Missing my class, but learning discipline

Posted on by

I got off work at 5:40, walked briskly through the rain to the Metro sta­tion, and caught the first train to Rockville. I thought I had plenty of time to make it home in time for yoga class at 7:30. At the next sta­tion, we were ordered off the train (no expla­na­tion that I could hear). I had to wait as two packed trains passed before find­ing one that had enough room for me to slip in. I arrived in Rockville too late to make yoga class at 7:30. So that ends my streak at five classes in a row.

I’ve been try­ing to change my body clock: in the past, if I didn’t get work early, it was hard for me to leave the office at 5:30. I tended to linger longer fin­ish­ing off one more task, send­ing another e-​​mail. That made it really hard to arrive at 7:30 classes, espe­cially if there was trou­ble on the Metro. In order to hit my goals for the 40-​​day yoga chal­lenge, I have to give my work a full eight hours, but start­ing at 9:00 or ear­lier, so that I have no excuses for stalling.

In order to do the 9-to-5:30 cycle, there are other mod­i­fi­ca­tions that have to hap­pen. I need to wake up at 6:30 am, which in turn means that I have to start my bed time rou­tine early so that I can get my min­i­mum seven hours of sleep.The rou­tine includes some restora­tive yoga, stretch­ing rou­tines for my neu­ropa­thy and med­i­ta­tion. Hav­ing suf­fered through an extended period of insom­nia and sleep depri­va­tion, I have come to appre­ci­ate the value of a good night’s sleep.

Hatha yoga at a deliberate pace

Posted on by

After a work day full of bad vibes and neg­a­tive loops, I was look­ing for­ward to yoga class as the stan­dard hatha yoga class that would allow me to chill in my com­fort zone.

But tonight, the sched­uled teacher (Mary­lou McNa­mara) was absent so Karen Barlove took over. Karen is an expe­ri­enced teacher who’s been at Thrive Yoga since the open­ing week. She led us through a habit-​​breaking hatha class and I was not chillin’. In fact, I was work­ing up a sweat as we went through some slow-​​motion sun salu­ta­tions. War­rior II was a deep step forward. Luckily, there was plenty of time at the end of class for restora­tive poses. I came out of the class hav­ing purged the emo­tional tox­ins accu­mu­lated dur­ing the day.

Fifth day in a row of yoga class and keep­ing on pace with my 40-​​day yoga challenge.

Picking up the pace

Posted on by

The fol­low­ing con­clu­sion should not come as a sur­prise to any­one who has taken fit­ness, well-​​being and the mind-​​body con­nec­tion seri­ously: since step­ping up the fre­quency of tak­ing yoga classes and going to the gym after Christ­mas, I’ve noted a sharp improve­ment in my mood, atti­tude, energy and sta­mina. Vinyasa classes still tax my reserves of strength and breath, but I can now man­age to get through them with­out falling to my knees (I will occa­sion­ally come out of a chal­leng­ing pose early).

Since the start of the 40 days of yoga at Thrive Yoga on Fri­day, I’ve made it to four classes in a row. My mus­cles are still sore after­wards, but I recover quickly enough that I am not talk­ing myself out of going to class the next day (I may not take in the 30-​​60 min­utes of aer­o­bic exer­cise at the gym as I’ve promised myself). There are about 14 par­tic­i­pants of all lev­els tak­ing part in the 40-​​day pro­gram, but we don’t nec­es­sar­ily all go to the same classes. Tonight, I was the only 40-​​dayer in the vinyasa flow class.

I look at the whole 40-​​day chal­lenge as a way of bring­ing clo­sure to all the mis­for­tunes and mile­stones of the past year, since my par­ents’ deaths, purg­ing the tox­ins, heal­ing myself and acquir­ing new phys­i­cal and emo­tional vigor. Through­out this period, I’ve never “given up my yoga prac­tice,” just cut back to a kind of main­te­nance plan, empha­siz­ing restora­tive yoga, pranayama and med­i­ta­tion, but there came a point when I was run­ning on fumes. Once I re-​​dedicated myself and stepped up my prac­tice in fre­quency and inten­sity, a dif­fer­ent set of ben­e­fits seemed to click on.

Today I rested

Posted on by

Some­times you just have to go with the flow.

I had planned to fit in more yoga and aer­o­bic exer­cise today before start­ing my 40-​​day pro­gram tomor­row. But get­ting lost in North­ern Vir­ginia while run­ning an errand in the morn­ing, tak­ing my wife to a lunch on the town and wel­com­ing a rare visit from my son came between me and over-​​reaching inten­tions. I needed the rest any­ways. Besides, I still fit in pranayama, med­i­ta­tion, and restora­tive yoga before the day was over.

Word­Press (or the theme or a plug-​​in) has the annoy­ing habit of insert­ing hyper­link for­mat­ting in a first para­graph if it con­tains a link, from the link to the start of the para­graph. But it does not func­tion as a hyper­link. This has forced me to avoid putting in links in the first para­graph or do a kind of dummy para­graph (as above) to pre­vent the bug from happening.

Four days in a row

Posted on by

Since Sat­ur­day, I’ve been able to carve out time to go to a daily yoga class, and also put in time at the gym to build up my aer­o­bic capacity. It’s amaz­ing how a ded­i­cated exer­cise regime can improve my out­look on life.

When­ever I can string together three or four classes in a row, the cumu­la­tive effect is extra­or­di­nary, mak­ing the next class feel a lit­tle bet­ter than the pre­vi­ous one. Today, it was a Hatha Yoga class with Mary­lou McNa­mara at Thrive Yoga: it was less intense than the first three vinyasa classes and allowed me to set­tle into the poses and work on align­ment. It also helped that my daugh­ter, Stephanie, was on the mat next to me, just like in the old days.

Book cover art: Baron Baptiste seat in a yoga pose

Set­ting aside 40 days to dive deep into your practice

I’ve signed up for the 40 days of yoga and well­ness at Thrive, start­ing on Jan­u­ary 6, the first time that I’ve under­take the chal­lenge of sus­tain­ing a rig­or­ous pro­gram of six yoga ses­sions a week (a min­i­mum of three for­mal classes, the rest can be at home), plus med­i­ta­tion and other activ­i­ties. It’s based on Baron Baptiste’s 40 Days to Per­sonal Rev­o­lu­tion: A Break­through Pro­gram to Rad­i­cally Change Your Body and Awaken the Sacred Within Your Soulso I will have one and a half months to con­cen­trate on my yoga prac­tice. Thrive Yoga has offered this pro­gram once a year for the past four or five years, so it has become a kind of rite of pas­sage at the studio.