Thirty Day Challenge

After three years of Bikram Yoga, I've finally made the decision to sign up for thirty consecutive days of classes. It's something that I've wanted to do for a long time, but until this month, my studio hadn't offered the thirty day challenge (that I've been aware of). Without the board in the studio, where participants put a tick next to their name for every class of the challenge they attend, there wasn't anything that motivated me enough to go for it before. I've had the intention to do my own challenge inthe past, but always made an excuse as to why it wasn't the right time. Now my studio is offering the challenge, with the condition that it must be started any time in July. With time running out, and a strong desire to do it, that was enough motivation to sign up.

On Friday evening, as I lay on my mat, I contemplated how much I was looking forward to the class. Experiencing that feeling before class is not a regular occurence for me these days. It used to be during the first year or so, when I started this yoga, but the last few months I've often felt that going to class was a chore. Don't get me wrong. I love this yoga, and I normally leave a class feeling great, but sometimes it feels like an effort to get there in the first place, when factored in with a busy life in London...a job that can be stressful, seeing friends, commuting, a relationship, other after-work work commitments that are becoming more common these days, cooking, and not forgetting about sleep. So in the enjoyment of that moment, anticipating the class that was about to begin, I made the decision to sign up for the challenge. With only five minutes before the start of class, there was not enough time to quickly pop out to reception to sign up, but I promised myself I would sign up later.


I decided to do the challenge for three main reasons. Firstly, I want the physical achievement of thirty days in a row. I'm interested to see how my body reacts to being pushed in the heat for a month with no days off. I'm expecting it will be tough, but I hope that it will be achieveable, especially considering that I normally go to class five times a week, so this should not be too much of a jump. I can recall doing eight days in a row several times, so I'm most interested to see what the effects are on my body after the eight day mark. I expect that I will have sore, tight muscles a few days in, and I will probably lose some flexibility in the short-term because of that. I'm hoping that after the challenge, I will have some increased flexibility.

The second reason, which is more important to me, is that I'm hoping to improve my focus on the breath, which is something I've become more interested in over the last few months. I feel like I've gone to another level in my practice since I started paying attention to my breath. It amazes me how much easier it is to go through a class when breathing correctly. The times I don't focus on it, and don't breathe correctly, I can find myself feeling dizzy and lightheaded, particularly on humid days. Breathing correctly, the humidity becomes less of an issue, and it's possible to concentrate more on the physical posture practice.

The final thing I want to get from the challenge is to see what mental changes I might make. I'd like to completely banish any type of distraction from my practise, and to be able to focus completely on the moment, the posture, the words spoken by the teacher. I'm often able to do this now, but I'm interested to see if I can make it even stronger, for example in classes after a particularly stressful day at work I would like to stop my mind wandering to the events of the day. If I can learn some lessons to take out of the studio into everyday life, then all the better for that too.

So I decided to write this blog as a record of the challenge, and any changes I notice that happen to me because of it. Thirty days doesn't seem like a very long time to me, so it may be that I achieve very little, if anything in that timeframe, except being able to say I did it. I'm interested to see though.