Making Time for Myself: A Week of Daily Yoga

This past week, I’ve been taking part in a 31-day yoga challenge at Peace, Love and Yoga in Carlsbad. I’ve seen a lot of benefits in the first week, but the most immediate gain has been how I plan my day.  

Instead of allowing factors—such as my work schedule and energy level—to dictate when I work out, I have to plan my day to ensure I attend workouts.

I’ve also had to make sure I keep a regular sleep schedule—which I wasn't able to one night. The accompanying video shows my attitude on Thursday when I was running on a few hours of sleep.

I attended a class that I thought would be easy, but was actually just as challenging as any other class. I ended up being more alert that evening and I slept really well.

Most classes are heated and I feel I get more out of those than non-heated classes (plus it’s fun to “suffer” with a room full of other people). 

Related Blog Post: Attain Fitness Results Through Social Workouts

In the past week, I’ve enjoyed gains to my sleep quality, energy level and fitness. I’ll follow up on those in a future post.

I find the meditative qualities of yoga to be extremely valuable. If you’re interested in learning to meditate, Deepak Chopra will hold his center’s free  21-day Meditation Challenge online starting Monday. I completed that last fall (see a trend here?) and I’ve used the skill regularly for better sleep and clearer thinking.

And in yoga news, I will have a story next week on what may be a new trend in yoga classrooms and there’s always the yoga-in-school controversy.

How do you make time for yourself? Tell us in the comments. 

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