January Intention - Daily Yoga

This year, instead of setting myself a traditional New Years' Resolution, I set 12 monthly mini-resolutions, or intentions as I've decided call them. In January my intention was to incorporate a practice of daily yoga into my life. I do practice yoga quite regularly, although I've never done it every single day for a month. The month was a success, not only did I do Yoga everyday, I even completed Yoga with Adriene's 30 Days of Yoga challenge, something I've tried (and failed) to complete for the past four years.

I chose this intention for a few reasons. I've practiced yoga regularly since I was pregnant with Ella, and I know I feel better in both body and mind when I have a more consistent practice. Due to my long commute and job where I sit a lot, I have to be much more intentional about when I get in regular exercise, and the nature of yoga helps with my sore and stiff back that comes with sitting so much. Over the Christmas holidays I watched this video on YouTube (it came up after doing a yoga video) of a teenage girl who was reporting back after doing yoga daily for a year. I was super impressed and inspired by her, but I knew if I tried to set myself a goal of doing yoga everyday for a year, the goal would be too big and achievable, at least in my mind. But committing to yoga everyday for a month felt much more doable.

At this stage in my life, the only practical time for me to do yoga is once the kids are in bed. There were definitely evenings where once I put the kids I would have much rather just collapsed in front of the TV for an hour before bed. But I made myself do yoga, and always felt much better for it. To get into a routine, once I had put "my kid" to bed, I would tidy up the playroom, and then roll out my mat before doing anything else that evening.  I found it gave me an extra little burst of energy, so that following yoga I didn't even always want to watch TV anymore, and was less annoyed if I had to do chores like putting away laundry or packing Ella's lunch.

I was able to make it to a yoga studio for three classes this month, and I can definitely see improvements in my strength and flexibility from my consistent practice. I see yoga as an investment in my future self - the one that is older but is active and can still keep up with her kids!

So far, I haven't given up the habit, even though my month of daily yoga is technically over. In fact, I have done yoga daily since Boxing Day, which makes it 46 days of yoga in a row so far. I know there will come a day that for some reason I can't fit it in, but I'm hoping to keep up the habit as consistently as I can.

Next month, I originally planned to focus on my attention on eliminating screen time when I am with the kids. While I still want to do that, and think it is super important, I've decided to leave that intention for March instead. The reason is that I am taking a group of students to a global conference in Marrakech for a week in February, so I've decided instead that my intention will be to take more photos. (Also I kind of felt like it was cheating to do a no screen time around kids intention when I won't be at home for a whole week!) I recently upgraded my iPhone so I'd like to learn how to use the features and perhaps do an online course (or at least watch a few YouTube videos) to learn some new photography skills. Hopefully I'll have something to show for it on the blog next month!