30 Days of Yoga - Orientation Day

January 1st 2018

Well I've only gone and done it again. So much for fresh start for the new year because this particular habit of mine is hard to kick.

Those of you who know me well will know I'm a sucker for a challenge. And I'm not talking the kind of challenge where you jump the highest, or hit the hardest or talk the loudest or run the fastest (what's 'running' anyway?). I'm talking about the kind of challenge that's entirely personal. The kind of challenge that other people may or may not find interesting but that to me, is going to give my heart a good talking to and give my psyche a good kick up the arse (remember when I decided to give Ramadan a go for a month to support my Muslim husband? Yeah, that kind of challenge).

And, those of you know me well will also know that I have a home yoga practice (if by 'home yoga practice' we mean off and on, amid the consistent detritus of two wild young Lads, and depending on how much red wine has featured the night before).

I like yoga. I get it. It soothes me. It challenges me. It makes me thankful for every inch of my body in a way I find impossible simply by standing in front of the mirror. For me, it's a form of meditation as well as exercise and does not force but gently encourages me to be in the moment, to experience what's going on in a very real and vital way.

And a couple of years ago a good friend of mine recommended a You Tube channel called 'Yoga With Adriene'. He mentioned words like 'funny', 'down to earth', 'accessible' and most importantly, 'free'. I was on it like a car bonnet. 

Since then I have yoga'd with Adriene most days of my life. Adriene Mishler never fails to impress me with her lovely, funny, open nature, as well as her brilliant (and sensible) slogan, 'Find What Feels Good'. This basically means, it's not all about the knot you can tie yourself in or the balancing pose you can hold for centuries, it's about what you're feeling right there, in the moment, and whether or not it's good. Otherwise, what's the bloody point?

She also seems to have the uncanny ability to create a yoga video for pretty much anyone and anything you could care to dream up. There's yoga for weight loss, yoga for strength, yoga for flexibility, beginners, balance, core, hips, neck, back, bedtimes, mornings, teachers, nurses, musicians, actors and everything in between. Heartbroken? There's a video for that. Period pains? Rock on. Travelling? Get on it. And, in case you're interested, she's even got hangovers covered.

As far as I can make out, she makes it a kind of tradition to start each year with a month-long yoga journey. I've completed some of these programmes before, and they are bloody brilliant, but I have never actually done them in real time on the programmed days in January, with the rest of the Yoga With Adriene online community. So when I saw Adriene adorning Facebook and the like with her newest yoga journey entitled 'TRUE', I knew this year was my year.

And because I probably do drink a bit too much red this time of year, and do tend to have 'genius' ideas whilst drifting off into something resembling sleep on the sofa in front of Netflix, I decided to top my yoga challenge off with a perfect little cherry. Why not blog about it too?

Because let's be realistic, it's not all going to be incense and sunrise postures now, is it? I work from home full time as well as fulfilling all the duties of a full-time housewife / slave. I have somehow, from what I consider to be my naturally calm and peaceful character, managed to raise two of the wildest and most terrifying young Lads you could hope to meet. I am emerging from the somewhat pleasant but nevertheless disarming fog of a sugar and alcohol-fuelled festive season. This is not going to be straight-forward.

That's got to be worth a blog post or two.

So, there it is. I will commit to completing an at-home yoga practice every day for the next 30 days AND I will blog about it on each of those days too. Please accept this disclaimer that it may be a load of tripe about my insecurities over doing Down-Dog all wrong or never being able to nail that bloody Tree Pose, or, perhaps, a whinge or two about the Lads barging in to take over the Playstation just as I'm about to 'get back to my true nature'.

But for now, my intentions are set, I have my TRUE calendar, I've watched my orientation video, and I know that the lovely Adriene 'has my back'. I couldn't give a monkeys how much the lads want that Playstation in the morning. It is MINE.

Go well,

Abi

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#YWATRUE