I’ve always been curious about yoga, had an inkling it might suit me but was also a little intimidated. I imagined you had to take it extremely seriously and there was no fun to be had. But then last year I discovered Adriene Mishler’s You Tube channel and I fell head over heels in love. She is just the right blend of ‘knows her shit’ and ‘down to earth goofy’. At last I’d found my way in to the mystical (it isn’t) world of yoga and for the past 10 weeks I’ve done yoga every day. I started by religiously following her inspirational ’31 Day Yoga Revolution’ in January and I’ve not looked back.
What has become apparent is that the areas of my life that are going well are as a result of me prioritising them. For too long I told myself ‘I don’t have time for yoga’ – I was actually waiting for some time to be magically served up on a silver platter. I was waiting for toddler-free time, to be precise. Strangely, it never presented itself. So I just took it, I took the time with toddler in tow. And I get interrupted; often he uses my Warrior II as a fireman’s pole or climbs under or over my Downward Dog and sometimes he joins me at the end and we lie together in Shavasana and I realise these moments are some of the most precious of my day. They’re not interruptions, they’re connections between him and I and between the neurons in his brain as he learns that exercise is accessible to him, is normal, is what you do. I never had that relationship with exercise when I was growing up and I so wish I had.
I realised that it was easy to say ‘I don’t have time to do yoga’ but if I gave that lament a slight reframe and said ‘taking care of my body and mind is not a priority‘, that didn’t feel anything like as okay. So I made it a priority, I commit to it each day and as a result I’ve done away with the whole morning shenanigans of lying in bed asking myself if I’m going to do any yoga, tell myself I’m a bit short for time I could just do it tomorrow (rinse and repeat). Now I’ve made it a conscious choice I wake up knowing it’s happening. No need for internal debate. Job done. And it’s truly working. I still can’t believe I’m ‘that’ person who does yoga every day. Never thought I’d be that person.
Operation Bloom 