Hi Friend,

In my last newsletter I told you about my consistent daily yoga practice in the Yoga with Adriene 30 day yoga challenge I’m doing with my mom. This daily streak lasted a little more than two weeks when I suddenly (and unintentionally) fell out of the habit for four days.

The first day I skipped a practice was a day where I had taught three yoga classes (on Zoom) and was feeling unsure about another 25-30 minutes of yoga. The next day, life happened again, and I honestly can’t even remember why I ignored my daily Yoga with Adriene challenge reminder email, but I can tell you that part of me was starting to feel dread about the daily reminder emails piling up in my inbox, urging me to practice. Then day three I learned about a death in my family and just wasn’t up to it. On day four, rather than actually practicing, I simply allowed myself to imagine how I wanted to reset my journey.

By day five of not-continuing what was intended to be a continuous daily yoga challenge (though I had done yoga those days as I had continued teaching as usual) I was feeling seriously stressed, which I knew was completely silly, since my mom and I were in this challenge together to enjoy a shared practice. 

But day five was also the day where I decided to dust myself off and recommit. I at first had grandiose thoughts about doubling on up yoga videos to “catch up” but at that point I realized that the only person I needed to sync back up with was myself. 

My mom had also fallen off the Yoga with Adriene daily practice for several days, and it turned out that she and I were perfectly in sync in our missing of multiple days.

So on day five I did one practice video and let that be enough.

It’s easy enough for self-care to slide. Sometimes you will have days or even weeks or even months or years where it just doesn’t happen like you intend. And sometimes you will have days where you’ve already done some other form of self-care and it just doesn’t make sense to push yourself to stay “on schedule.”

The point I want to make today is that life (this) isn’t a sprint; it’s a much longer journey.

If you miss some self-care or self-development time, you are not alone; simply find your resolve to settle back in and begin again.

You’ve got this.

Love,

Monica