Here goes my report from the trenches after my last post’s resolution to do Hatha Yoga exercises daily.
In the past ten days, I exercised on seven of them. Of the three days I skipped, two days my intuition advised me against it, and one day I was plain lazy. Of the seven days I did my yoga exercises, however, there were at least two or three days when I barely mustered the motivation to do them. Overall, I can say that half of the time, my motivation was strong and I enjoyed the practice tremendously.
I left my practice open and did not stick to a specific time duration, allowing me to fit it in unexpected gaps of my daily schedule. I also labeled the groups of exercises from Asana, Pranayama, Mudra, Bandha by numbers 1 through 19 and wrote down the numbers on blank Tarot cards. I generously sprinkled blank, unmarked cards with the nineteen numbered and pulled them randomly. Whenever I pulled a blank card, I took it as permission to end my practice. Because I never knew what cards I would pull on that day, I never felt my practice boring or tedious. The cards kept everything refreshing and intriguing.
I frequently reminded myself that it matters how I exercised and not how much I did. That freed me from the pressure to rush through so that I could put a checkbox on my to-do list and move on to other things. It also helped me avoid negative self-talk if I had done only 5 minutes instead of 25.
The overall verdict is that I did okay – neither very well nor too bad. I might as well congratulate myself for this fledgling effort toward regular physical Hatha Yoga practice. You will be surprised how well positive re-enforcement works on fragile efforts. 🙂
Tatiana
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