Thirty Days of Yoga
By Michelle Taffe
On October 30th just past I completed my 30-day challenge at a yoga studio here in Melbourne, Australia. I am now quite tired, and I think I’ll take at least three or four days off before doing another class. I also have a cold thanks to the erratic spring weather that Melbourne is currently experiencing. One day it is hot, dry and 30 degrees and the next it’s pouring with rain, howling with wind and cold enough to chill you to the bones.
The yoga I have been doing is called Power Yoga. It’s a flowing Vinyasa flow style of yoga championed by North American yogi Baron Baptiste. Each class starts with a sun salutation A and B sequence interspersed with chair poses that lasts for 30 to 45 minutes. Given that the room is heated to about 30 degrees at the beginning of class, by the end of this sequence I am usually dripping with sweat. The second half of the class is devoted to balancing postures, spinal twists and backbends and a range of inversions.
After about five days of this my muscles were hurting and I was quite exhausted. After about a week though my body had adjusted to the routine and I was enjoying the daily class. A part of my enjoyment came from going to the studio every day, and feeling a part of this yoga community. The camaraderie with the other students undertaking the challenge was fun.
About half-way into the thirty days though I started getting a sore neck and shoulders, which I attributed to the dropping my head back in camel pose combined with daily shoulder stands where I realised I was crunching my neck a bit. So to remedy this I took a day off (which I then had to make up with two classes in one day) and also adjusted my postures so I wasn’t putting too much pressure on the sensitive neck and shoulder areas.
What have I learned from the challenge?
Routine is a good thing
Though I have sometimes inwardly rebelled against routines, thinking they were for boring people or robots, I now realise that routine creates welcome structure in the day, especially for those, like me, who work independently.
Community is invaluable for growth and expansion
Though I also like to do my own home yoga practice, the community of like-minded people at a yoga studio, or the Sangha (Sanskrit term for a spiritual community) provides support and inspiration that you can’t find anywhere else.
Mental attitude is everything
My body does get tired with strenuous exercise, but this feeling can change in an instant with a change of attitude. As in yoga, so in life – in one instant if we change our attitude, everything else follows suit and our experience of that moment is radically different.
Like Melbourne weather, my body and mind feels different every day
It is hard to predict how it will feel tomorrow or the next. Some days it felt like I had to move a mountain to get into even the easiest asana, and other days I felt like a ballet dancer, moving from one elegant posture to another in an effortless flow. But instead of feeling bad because I am aching all over one day, I just note – aching all over today. Instead of complaining because it’s so windy I can barely ride my bike to class, I note – oh an amazingly windy day today. And instead of deciding I should enter the Australian Yoga Asana championships on the days where every posture is effortless – I note – today I am experiencing ease and flow.
Like anything in life, when I contemplated the 30 days of Power Yoga and thought about it as a whole it seemed a difficult undertaking.
But when I just concentrated on making it to the studio each day, it became much easier. This has been a lesson in living in the moment – as my teachers at the studio are reminding us each day – in being present.
The next challenge is to maintain and enhance this sense of presence without necessarily going to yoga class every day. But now that my body is accustomed to it, I may just find myself at the studio more often than not.
