The Struggle With Yoga

I have tried to do yoga a number of times in my relatively short lifetime.  Each time I tried it, I enjoyed it immensely and without fail, I think to myself, "I should do this more often!"  And then the next day, I drop the ball.  Last year while I was living on campus, i had to take a physical education class (I still feel like that's really dumb at the college level, but I digress) and I needed an activity to do outside of class that would keep me active.  One day, we did yoga and my interest flared up again, so much so that when I got back to my dorm that night, I went on Amazon and bought myself a yoga mat.  I think I did yoga two days in a row and stopped.  And now I was stuck with a yoga mat.

Actually, in hindsight, I'm glad I still had that yoga mat even after I stopped doing it consistently.  It's a constant reminder that, "Hey, you were passionate about this a couple weeks ago.  Get off your bum and come back to the mat."  It's not just the voice in the back of my head telling me that either.  It's a physical presence.  Every time I see that mat leaning against my desk, I'm reminded.  And it's not exactly hidden, so I see it a lot.

My problem isn't that I'm just not interested in yoga.  On the contrary, I think this is the only exercise that I've attempted to do more than once.  I like yoga because it encourages me to slow down and be really aware of what my body is doing and feeling,  Yoga allows me to stop and listen and push forward not just physically, but mentally too.  You have to hold poses for what feels like forever, but because the lady in the video hasn't put her foot down or used her knees to push into cobra pose, you don't want to do that either.  So you push yourself through the pain and through the urge to do the modified pose.

My problem isn't that yoga and I don't get along, because I find it very satisfying, but my problem is that I lack the drive to do it consistently, which is when it would work the best for me.  I started yoga again this year with the intent to keep it up.  So after unpacking from my semester and cleaning my room, I broke out my yoga mat and a couple weeks ago, my mom and I did yoga together in our basement, streaming YouTube through the Wii.  We found a series of YouTube videos on the channel Yoga With Adriene called 30 Days of Yoga.  I'm determined to make it through those videos, but even though I've been at it a couple of weeks, I've only finished four videos.  So really, my progress sucks, but also, I can't be completely ashamed of this.  This is the best streak I've had in any attempt I've made to make yoga a daily part of my life.  It's no where near perfect, but it's progress.