My yoga/meditation challenge is officially over now. Let’s look at the score:
Yoga: 30 days!
Meditation: Uhh… well, technically 30 days… sort of… but I definitely crapped out on my self-imposed effort to get to 2.5 hours after the 26th, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t manage to do anything longer than 75 minutes. It’s the lack of sleep, you see—I can’t function as a meditative person with less than 8 hours. That would be fine if I could get to bed on time every night (absolutely impossible when you have wind ensemble rehearsals that go until 10 p.m. on Thursdays!) and/or meditate as late into the morning as necessary (absolutely impossible when you need to be at work by 9:30 a.m. and it takes you an absurdly long time to get ready in the morning and you’d really prefer to walk and take the bus rather than drive), but that’s not working out.
BEFORE: I’m not sure I can meditate for 2.5 hours…
AFTER: I definitely can’t meditate for 2.5 hours (yet).
I’ll probably try again next year, but in the meantime, I think I’m going to just set my alarm for 5:25 every morning, do 45ish minutes of yoga and an hour of meditation (which I know I can do if I’ve gotten enough sleep and the yoga was good), and see if I can get into that groove.
I have some other thoughts on before and after, though. Namely, when is the best time to do all these yogic things? Before your day starts? Or after your day ends? There’s nothing like getting up and going straight to the mat. I certainly don’t want to trade that for anything. But I’ve also gotten into the habit of coming home from work and going straight to the WiiFit, where I do exactly three things every day (usually 1 strength training, 1 yoga, and 1 “game”), and let me tell you, there is nothing like doing even a teensy bit of exercise like that after sitting in a stupid chair all day. So, Kath, that’s where I do my planks (100 seconds on my last plank challenge! the elbow kind!), and it’s also where I do a teeny tiny little bit of afternoon yoga, and it feels wonderful.
Wendanyon, the fact that you even got up to 75 minutes is really spectacular. I think you’re right, it’s great to find the same time of day to do the yoga and/or meditation, but some days that is simply not possible.
What do you play in wind ensemble? Have the yoga and meditation affected your playing at all? I know that my singing is completely different when I’m doing yoga on a regular basis.
I play the flute (for the past 19 years, yikes!). I don’t know that yoga, etc. has affected my playing that much, unless you count eating up my practice time (I *really* need to reconstruct my embouchure this summer!). But you know, maybe it did make me far more aware of my posture and breathing than I might have been otherwise, specifically alerting me that yes, my lung capacity has actually gone *down*. I should work on that too…