As a follow up to Ebb and Flow, here are ten lessons learned from my personally imposed and much enjoyed 30 Day Yoga Challenge:
1. After many repetitions of chataranga, my arms became a lot stronger!
2. Though previously quite difficult to maintain on a regular basis, my yoga practice at home was relatively successful - special thanks to Reagan for some excellent videos!
3. In addition to those, I found some challenging YouTube videos here and here. If you search YouTube for others, beware - there are many yoga informercial results! (But let me know if you find any good ones.)
4. Throughout the thirty days, I missed two days entirely and did not practice for at least thirty minutes on three days... instead of allowing it to induce self-loathing, I tried to extend my mindset during yoga, that is being patient with myself, to my life.
5. Ben has an intense ujjayi breath. Some might say "distracting" but I call it "inspiring"; that's love.
6. Being a runner, my hamstrings are notoriously stubbornly inflexible, but daily yoga leads me to believe that they are actually more flexible than I thought.
7. Doing yoga with a classmate of the canine variety humbles you in your upward and downward dog poses and makes it quite obvious where the poses got their names.
8. Learning to, as one of the instructors would say frequently, "relax within your efforts" is an incredible life lesson. There are many realms in which we all need to work hard; being able to do so calmly and without stress is extremely beneficial.
9. At the end of a long day, there are very few substitutes for uninterrupted deep breathing and a hot shower.
10. A whole new yoga vocabulary. That's a lie... I am definitely still learning these.
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