Me coming out of crow.
Apparently, September is National Yoga Month. For me, every month is yoga month, but hey, I’m down for celebrating and creating more awareness. I am, in a small way, celebrating this month by upping my home yoga practice. I admit, I tend to like going to the studio a lot more than I like practicing at home. For one thing, I love being surrounded by the collective energy of my fellow yogis. It’s nice to have the variety of different teachers who challenge me to push myself. For another, I’m ridiculously easily distracted (hello, vata) and most of my home practices are liberally punctuated by the sound of dogs barking and kids yelling and lawnmowers doing their thing. I can look at it positively and see it as an opportunity to learn to tune out distraction, or I can get annoyed that while I’m in savasana or yoga nidra, my very lovely, loving pug is trying to lick my face or jump on my stomach (not to mention when the neighbor dogs start barking, Monster happily joins in the barking frenzy.) Truth be told, I’m not yet at that point where I’m able to completely disregard distraction and the yoga studio environment is so much easier for me to stay in ‘the zone.’
For a long time, especially in my first few years, I grappled with the notion that if I didn’t practice for an hour or 90 minutes, it didn’t count. So, I didn’t until I went to my studio classes. All this really accomplished was that I missed out on a lot of really great yoga practice. I tried to establish a home practice and was fine following along with DVDs for a while, but after the 10th time of the same class, I’d lose interest and again, miss out on some great yoga time.
More and more often, I’ve read advice from other yogi(ni)s that has really resonated with me, “a bit of yoga every day is better than a) nothing or b) a lot of yoga once (or twice, or three times) per week.” So, while I may not have an extended physical asana practice every day, I try to incorporate some dedicated yoga time daily to either meditation or philosophy. And, on my meditation/philosophy days, I’ll try to throw in a sun salutation or two, or maybe just a pose I’m working on. Often, giving myself permission to practice a tiny bit leads to more practice.
That said, in the past few weeks, I’ve been working on honing and extending my daily home asana practice (distractions be damned!) My most recent useful tool is: YogaGlo. It beats the same DVDs every day by a mile and a million. I am kicking myself that I haven’t signed up earlier. I have on several occasions almost signed up, but didn’t feel like ponying up $18/month when I’ve got access to free yoga through my work/study. $18/month is actually NOTHING in Chicago, where $18 will get you approximately one class at many studios. Unfortunately, my studios are not close to my house and while I love the 10-14 mile round trip bike commute when the weather is nice, some days, I just don’t feel like it.
The day I signed up, I felt like a kid in a candy store. The choice and variety of teachers is fantastic, especially since my 2 favorites, Jason Crandell and Kathryn Budig are amply represented. I love that you can filter classes by duration, which really fits in nicely with my “a bit of practice every day” goal. Yesterday, for example, my energy was way low after I found out my poor sweet pug had another mast cell tumor. However, I found a 20 minute class that was perfectly tailored to my energy level and needs. I’ve been so excited by my options, that I queued up and scheduled classes for nearly every day of September. Sometimes two or more a day (i.e. vinyasa flow in the morning and restorative/yin in the evening.)
The ultimate point of this post is that every little bit does count and that the all or nothing/studio or bust approach, especially for me, doesn’t work. The key is to make a commitment to let yourself practice for 5, 10, 20 minutes, whatever it takes, in lieu of thinking it doesn’t count if you’re not practicing for an hour or more. And, there are so many tools at our disposal these days that make even the short practices more enticing and easier to stick with.
So hey, why not join me in practicing every day in September?
Renee Esper Yoga 
Poor pug, hope he is okay… 😦
It has taken me yeeeears to establish a daily home yoga practice. I’m now happily at the stage where if I nothing at all for a day, I feel a bit odd, like I haven’t brushed my teeth all day 🙂 I think you’re right, the key is to say to yourself that even 5 minutes is better than nothing. And I often find I say to myself ‘ok, I feel rubbish/I’m so busy, but I’ll just lie on my mat semi-supine for 5 minutes awareness of breathing’ and then once I’m there, I end up doing a little more and a little more. And end up feeling much better.
One thing that helped me was keeping a practice journal. We are required to do this for our course, and I’ve found I really like it. Most days I write very little – just the date, time, length of practice and briefly what I did (sometimes just in stick figures). Perhaps how I felt. So it takes no time, but somehow has really helped me make it a daily habit.
Hopefully puggy will be ok. He’s a resilient little old man 🙂 I definitely agree that once you get on the mat, even for just a bit, the inclination to do just a little bit more is strong. I’ve noticed that the days when I least want to practice are the days that I both needed it the most and get the most out of it. I’ve never ever regretted a yoga practice. Journalling is a great idea. I don’t journal traditionally, but I do track my practices and include short notes. I wish we had journaled in my training. That would be a good practice to get into and nice to look back to see progress or just how different practices affected you.
Yes, I could do with writing just a little more then I’d notice patterns etc. more clearly looking back. I tend to – surprise, surprise – write more when it’s actually part of my homework assignments. I kept it going over the summer months ‘just for me’ but it’s perhaps getting a little skimpy! But at least it makes me very aware of when/how long I’ve practised 🙂