Sally's 100 Day Yoga Challenge in More Than 100 Words

This challenge will be my first yoga challenge and I am pretty ecstatic about it! Some of my closest friends are joining me on the journey and I'm sure I'll meet some pretty great new people as well. I am still fairly new to yoga. I took my first class a couple years ago and have not made the time till now to completely submerge myself in it. I manage a group home for adults with disabilities which can be a stressful and an emotionally taxing job. In the last year I found I was often letting work outweigh time for myself. Starting to energy exchange at Moksha was the first step towards doing things for myself and working on enriching my own life as it gives me the freedom and motivation to practice more regularly. Once Colette told me about the 100 day challenge some of the staff and EE's were setting up I thought what a great way to really get involved and work towards a healthier lifestyle for the new year. On the mat, I find yoga gives me my own time and place to be freed of life's stresses while strengthening my body and to be honest I am just beginning to learn what it means to take my yoga off the mat. One of my own personal goals from this challenge is to embrace my practice off the mat.

Day 1- Source Yoga offered an open house and figured I'd check it out. I'd spent the day with a couple friends and we all went to the class together. It was an 'Open Flow'. The instructor was energetic and inspiring! For the New Year he asked 'What are you saying yes to?" as we dove into a warrior 3 pose. Which I couldn't resist responding with "a100 day yoga challenge!"

Day 2- No class. Car troubles and an EE shift at Donald. I felt a little bummed that it was only day 2 and i had already missed a day.

Day 3- I went back to Source in the morning to enjoy one of the last open house classes. 'Dancing Warrior.' It was a very free flowing class, lots of movement. The music was fantastic! who doesn't love mixing up a little James Brown or Xavier Rudd into a yoga class?

With all this energy from the warrior poses in the morning I decided to go to Moksha for the music class and the Hatha in the evening. There's something inherently beautiful about practicing yoga to live music. The energy in the room really seems to flow back and forth from the musicians to the yogi's. Presently I realize that I would like to work on my alignment. I put a block underneath me today in pigeon pose to see if that will help my hips from falling to one side as they tend to do.

The Hatha class was a nice finish to the day and special guests from Kendra's family was a wonderful surprise and absolutely adorable. Ryann speaking of that double edge sword today really hit home as I did feel a little at loss for missing day two's class.

Day 4- Today I almost went to Moksha's 9:30am class but thought the heat may be a little intense after yesterday's classes. So I went to Blue Moon's All Levels instead. Ironically the intention of the class was to find an equlibrium in your practice and in your life. Be kind to your body and don't push yourself too hard. The instructor got us to envision what that goal will look like and we used some warrior poses to gives us the energy to work towards our goal. The more I thought of balancing life the more I thought of how much searching I have done in the past while. Searching and searching for something to fulfill or satisfy my life. Even in Yoga I often find myself searching for the next position of the pose and always wanting to take it further. Striving for a goal is good but, it is also important to work within your parameters and master them first before you can move on to something new. People always say to 'think out of the box' it seems that we must be able to take ourselves fully out of the box first instead of just trying to grasp outside of it for something beyond our means. This will be something I need to practice doing.

Day 5-