My 30-day Yoga Challenge.

It all started around a year ago when I attended to one free yoga class in a park in Helsinki. After that yoga has slowly taken bigger and bigger role in my everyday life to the point that yoga is now something my body - and mind - need regularly. The next natural thing to do was to try out the 30-day yoga challenge by Yogobe: to practice yoga every day for 30 days. This post is to share how it went.

See more about the challenge from: http://more.yogobe.com/kesan-30-paivan-joogahaaste/

As a typical Finnish person, who usually keeps her life quite busy, the first thing to come in mind was whether I would have time to practice yoga every day. I didn't want to make the challenge as something I would have to stress about because yoga is everything else but a source of stress to me - actually it is a way of removing the stress gathered in my body. However, practicing yoga doesn't mean that you have to do 90 minutes session every time and sometimes just 10 minutes can be enough to relax your mind and to draw your attention to how your body is feeling at the present moment. So saying that there is no time is nonsense, really. There is always time; the thing is what I decide to do with it.

I moved to my new studio apartment conveniently just when the challenge started and the first thing I did there was a yoga practice. It is not a big home, actually quite tiny, but nevertheless there was one specific item I wanted to leave enough space to: my yoga mat. So I decided to bring as few furniture as possible to leave free space in the main room, and I have came to realize that comfy sofa, small dinner table and beautiful wooden chest is actually everything I need there. My yoga mat is always there in it's own space on the floor, ready and waiting for my next practice. There is no easier way of doing yoga than being able to jump on the mat whenever I'm home. It is like a constant reminder that this is something that is good for me, that I should be doing it more for myself in my everyday life. And it works!


Morning yoga with Yogobe @home.

I'm definitely a morning person: I never snooze my alarm, I'm the most efficient during the morning and early daytime, my thoughts flow better in the morning than evening, and I prefer waking up to going to sleep. However, I have hardly been using this time of the day for doing any sort of workout, stretching, dancing etc. Now that it has been pretty quiet at work because of the summer and I can start working a bit later, I decided to try starting most of my work days with a yoga practice during the challenge. And I can tell you: it is without a question the best way of starting a day. Even if I had a shorter sleep during the night and felt really sleepy when alarm rang, yoga woke up my body nicely and softly, opening up the sleepy muscles and especially my back that always seems to stiffen during the night. Morning is also a perfect timing to let positive thoughts conquer my mind so that they'll follow me the whole day. Always start your day with a smile is a good advice for anyone, don't you agree? Morning yoga quickly became a nice routine to kick off my days and now that I have been skipping it some mornings I already regret it at the time I reach my workplace.

Even though I love doing yoga at home and online yoga is definitely a great tool for that (atm most of my home practices are done with an online instructor), I also love sharing my yoga practices with other yogis. When doing yoga together there is so much more energy to share and that energy definitely makes the practice feel different. There are three yoga studios nearby my home and I checked out two of them during the challenge: both are definitely places that I’m going to visit also later on. Summer is also a great time to find several free outdoor yoga classes around Helsinki and I didn’t let this opportunity to run out of my hands. My favorite yoga practice during the whole challenge was a record-breaking big outdoor yoga event in Sinebrychoff Park where more than 300 yogis shared their practice and energy. That huge amount of energy really made magic happen in my body and soul, wow.

Sharing the energy @Yoga Goes Koffari.

Outdoor yoga @Töölönlahti.

So how did the challenge go? Did I manage to do yoga every day for 30 days? To be honest, no, not every single day, not because I wouldn’t have found time for it but because those days I decided to listen to my body that couldn’t take in a physical practice at that moment. However, that is not the main point. The main point is that I did challenge myself and while doing that found new ways of practicing yoga and created new healthy everyday routines into my life. I fell in love with yoga more deeply. I was able to, through yoga, open op my heart to other things happening in my life. I felt happier, more alive, healthier, more present and aware of myself.

 

  

Thank you Yogobe and Yoga365 for motivating me to challenge myself and, most importantly, making me feel better thoroughly. Keep on spreading the yoga love!