Whhy I do daily yoga

 The DownDog yoga app is having a "do yoga every day in November " challenge,  and someone asked in their FB group what people do to motivate themselves to keep doing it after the challenge time period ends. My reply:

I have been doing daily yoga since 2003, where "day" is defined as "a period of time I am awake". So, especially while finishing my thesis, my yoga for the day happened kinda late on the day (like 26:00, or even 32:00 hours, but I did it before bed, or, rarely, got back up after going to bed and did it before sleeping properly). 

 

For me the "goal" I am, working towards is super selfish: having strength and flexibility when I am in my 90's.

 

The inspiration I had was the woman in the next room at the assisted living home a friend's grandmother lived at. The woman could, at 90-something years old, still bend over and put her hands flat on the floor, as she had done it daily for all of her adult life. When I learned about that I decided that I wanted to be such a 90 year old, and set mydef the challenge of daily yoga so I can achieve the long term goal, and have stuck with it ever since.

 

I soon learned that the reward is also much more immediate. My daily yoga feels so good, I want to do it again the next day!

 

How much time each session is varies greatly based on how I am doing. Right after surgery my yoga consisted of a couple of minutes gentle stretching of body parts far from the surgery area. On days when I am healthy, well rested, and have time to spare it is a full hour of intense, focused yoga workout. I listen to my body, and other commitments in my life, and give my yoga time what is right for me for any given day.

 

I was delighted to discover this app because, even though I had been doing yoga on my own for nearly 20 years at that point, it is nice to get external suggestions of what poses to do, and to not have to keep track of how long I hold a pose on one side so as to be able to do the same on the other.

 

But there are days I do my yoga without the app, as it is easier to converse with my partner as we do yoga together without the app, and if he got home late  we have no other time to catch up in our day and plans for tomorrow before we need to sleep.

 

Even so, I love the app, and it amuses me to opt in to the challenge, even if it is limited by its arbitrary definition of "day", that does not always align with my, ever changing, sleep schedule.