This trial started with me adding more to a full plate. Everything inevitably came tumbling down. I was inspired to try freelancing by a number bunch of resources I found near the tail end of my morning routine run. Freelancing always seemed to be a cool concept to me, but trying to do everything all at once led overwhelm and uncertainty.
Picking up another project, I realized I was trying to handle too much. The timing of reading the book Essentialism could not have been better. My opinion of this book is definitely impacted by the state I was in a few weeks ago. This book helped me out so much, I wanted to give away a free copy. Luckily, there is a great, simple resource out there that helped me set up a giveaway. I honestly believe this will be one of the most important books I ever read.
How Much is Too Much?
It’s clear the solution I took was to start breaking down my projects to only this blog and my mail list. Previously, I was trying to write on the side, produce a podcast, and work on a small business. All of this was on top of my regular nine to five job. I struggled to tell myself no to any of the ideas that popped into my head, but as I mentioned last week, saying no is critical to success.
Taking a step back allowed me to review some of these ideas and decide if I want to continue pursuing them. One of the questions I asked was simple, what would be my ideal life if I chose X. I had five separate responses to this.
Another question I posed involved values I thought I held close. When reading back these values, I would ask myself, “how do I apply this in my life?” I find people often respond with very cookie cutter answers to questions such as this. However, when questioning their own decisions and actions, they have trouble connecting the dots. Some of my original responses fell into this category, so I figured pursuing those values didn’t really matter to me.
What’s Next?
With this insane spiral of trying to do too much, I thought this might be a good time to look back on the trials I’ve done so far and discuss how it impacted my life so far. With nine full trials and this misstep, I’ll be covering two to three trials per post.
Thanks for reading, and remember to check out the giveaway for a chance to win free books!
Over the past week, I’ve taken a step back and just put all of my side projects on hold. Looking at what I’ve been doing since the beginning of the year, I realize I’ve been piling on too much. The same applies to what I’ve been doing professionally at my day job. I’ve been trying to get every single request done. Promising deadlines that weren’t met became the standard. Juggling tasks from different people, causing projects to take longer and longer. I was totally beaten down by the load I was putting on and it wasn’t helping me or the people I was making bad promises to.
Last week was the pinnacle of this build up. The day started off okay but spiraled out of control. I learned an important lesson that I’ve read time and time again. For some reason, it never settled in until now. The importance of saying no.
Why You Need to Say No
Before my meltdown last week, I was trying to do it all and make everyone happy. If someone stopped by my desk and asked about the email they sent me, I would often look into it and see if I could help out. Time and time again, I would drop what I was doing to work on the next issue someone reported. The role I work in has me working with the data behind the scenes at my employer, which unfortunately means my team has a part to play in nearly all aspects of the company. This approach has often led to some partially completed projects being forgotten for the latest problem or request that has come up.
This inability to say no wasn’t only a part of my work life, but every side project that entered my mind was now being shoved into my weekly schedule. Whether it’s a podcast, video, book, business, you name it, I’ve probably started laying out the foundation in a notebook over the past four months.
Of course, this isn’t to say trying things out is bad. Hell, that’s the exact reason I started this blog. I wanted to keep an online journal of my experiences and share my thoughts with any readers. The important thing is to find out what does and doesn’t work. There isn’t enough time in the world to say yes to everything.
Opportunity Cost and Why It Matters
I was an economics major in college. A professor of mine had a quote, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” The concept he was getting at was known as opportunity cost.
Everything we do cost resources. These range from natural resources, money, time, or another opportunity. I think the last item on that list is the most neglected. If you have lunch at home, you can’t have that same meal at the diner down the street. The opportunity is now spent.
Opportunity cost is the reason saying no matters. Taking on too many responsibilities left me feeling like I was juggling chainsaws. New ones were being thrown into the mix with every thought of, “I can do that too.”
I’m still finding out what my yeses and nos are, but taking a step back and reading has definitely helped. Talking with some friends and family has definitely helped too. If you’re feeling overwhelmed or burnt out, try taking a step back and put some of your obligations on the chopping block. Ask yourself the hard questions. Tell not only others, but yourself, no.
If I told you I’m doing well in the past few weeks there’s a good chance I was lying to you. Perhaps it’s being able to hide behind a keyboard that makes honesty easier, or that it’s just a hassle to tell people things aren’t going well. “Good” feels like a programmed response to “How’s it going?” Or. “How are you?” No one wants to hear anything outside that standard response, but sometimes that’s just how it goes.
The past month or so has left me both physically and mentally drained. I don’t know what it is. Stuck in a rut? Poor sleep? Diet? Depression? I really don’t know, but I just feel that being honest about how things are going might set better expectations for this trial, which I think I am going to put on hold for now. Stopping this trial early is not something that I want to do, but I don’t believe I will be putting in enough effort to share an experience about freelancing. Lately, I’ve been getting home from work with barely enough energy to take care of myself.
Last week, I thought my issue was from trying to handle too many things at once. Establishing a priority of what to focus on was supposed to help, but even still I just feel heavy. I wake up unmotivated and go to bed the same. When I do feel things are starting to go well, I often feel great, but shortly after, feel like I come down from a high. And the comedown is hard. This rollercoaster of emotions hit a new climax today as I drove home for an event tomorrow. Emotionally I wanted to drive into head-on traffic, not even exaggerating here. Luckily, the logical part of my brain won that argument. I mean there was no need to drag someone else into my shitty day.
In the end, I don’t want this to come off as me making excuses for this trial, complaining about life being hard, or whining. At the end of the day, I just don’t have it in me to keep this up as of late. If you read this far thank you for the support on the blog. I’m not sure if I will write anything or not next week, but will post around as usual. Perhaps this depressed feeling will pass by then, or it will just inspire another rant about the current status of my mental state. All in all, I think writing this has already helped a bit, whether I actually click publish or not…
Image from the book Essentialism. I think it captures the point I am making below pretty well.
Getting Started in Freelancing Is Hard, Obviously
Unfortunately, this week has left me with little to discuss on the actual trial I am partaking in right now, but it has got me pondering a series of bad decisions lately.
As a quick overview, I signed up for a freelancing website, upwork.com, set up my account, applied for about 10 positions, and waited. This hasn’t been terrible, just uneventful.
Over the duration of this trial, I hope to try a few different sites and other options for finding work. What I do want to avoid is starting a part-time job. In my opinion, this is completely different from freelancing. I am not looking for additional income, what I am looking for is a level of freedom and choice I can’t get at my day job. A freelancer has more flexibility in hours, projects worked on, contract terms, and rate of pay. This, of course, isn’t to start the myth that a freelancer always gets to choose each of these elements, but I feel he or she has a greater scope of influence on those elements.
Priority and Why It Matters
The English word priority came about in the 15th Century. It essentially means the very first thing. I recently attained this specific knowledge from the book Essentialism by Greg McKeown. When discussing priority he points out a clear problem with our modern use of the word. We pluralized it. How many priorities do you have on your to-do list? Your project plans? Bucket List?
I’ve recently found myself in a particular struggle. Working on too many projects at once has led to exhaustion with little to no results. Trying to manage a day job, several side projects, a social life, and a healthy lifestyle is not viable in the long run. Trying to have it all often leads to having nothing at all, at least nothing of actual importance.
Take a Step Back
For the next few days, I’ll be lucky enough to spend some time back home with family and put some projects on the shelf for a bit. I hope to take a look at some of the projects I’ve started and try set a priority for what I am working on.
I don’t want to come off implying that nothing can be worked on in parallel or there’s no point in starting a new project. I am referring to constantly adding a new “priority” to an ever-expanding list of daily commitments. Giving new projects and ideas a try is essentially what inspired me to start this blog, to write about those experiences. The trouble I’ve run into is trying to do too much all at once.
Starting Essentialism as mentioned above really got me roped into this idea, though it was something on my mind even before I started the book. If you find yourself having trouble with sticking to something and saying yes to new commitments before considering what impact it will have on your current commitments, I definitely recommend this book. Even just the intro chapter got my mind hooked.
Next week, I hope to have a better update on freelancing!
The morning routine is ultimately the foundation of your day. This past month of setting an expectation each morning really gave me the leg up on some days that may have been much worse off otherwise. Even days where I rolled out of bed and felt rushed, I forced myself to stick to the general outline of the routine I wanted to follow. Doing so helped me take my day back.
My Morning Routine
To sum up four weeks of routines, I personally found a short burst of cardio to be the best thing to start out with. Jumping jacks have been the easiest to do. You can do them anywhere without equipment and you also don’t need much space even.
Next, I’ve been reading as I try to drink a tall glass of water, which I’ve prepared the night before. The water is refreshing after hours of slow dehydration. What I would really like to try more of is meditation at this point in the morning, but that’s been the toughest for me to start so far. I’ve been able to a few days, mostly weekends. Most guided meditations I find are just new age whack for me to really settle in during. Maybe I’m too cynical or am just an ass, but I just can’t loosen up when I hear about certain spiritual concepts. Something I might try in place here is to do breathing exercises. I definitely have some more research to do here.
The final piece is to come up with a “first win” of the day. This was definitely the most difficult for me. Anyone who has known me for a while may know that I do not operate well in the morning. I am a night owl when it comes to getting work done. I write better at 10 o’clock at night as compared to 9 o’clock in the morning. To work with my personality here, what I’ve tried to do is lay out a good foundation to work on. I will jot down notes or an outline for a project I’m working on later allowing myself to get into the meat of the work quicker. For example, this week, I recorded a podcast episode with a friend of mine (shout out to you Dan!). That morning I made sure I had at least three points in mind for the recording. Whether I used them or not wasn’t the point, the important thing was to set myself up with some ideas to get over the brainstorming phase and be able to get into the work quicker.
Not every day requires prep work for a project, so I’ve also done small maintenance tasks from cleaning to reorganizing. These don’t require much brain power but can help prevent procrastination down the road. I’ve tried to take note of the small things that have built up and need to be addressed.
Key Takeaways
One of the most important pieces I think I learned is to accept the fact that you will not be able to keep up with your routine every day. We are not robots…yet. The key here is to forgive yourself for missing a day and take steps to avoid it happening in the future.
Stayed up too late? Have a reminder go off 30 minutes before you need to go to bed. Have trouble getting out of bed? Create systems that reward (or don’t punish) you for getting up the first time. The important thing when you miss a morning is to learn from it and apply some thought to preventing yourself from making the same mistake.
Another piece I love about my routine is that it’s mine. I love to try out new things (who would think?), and morning routines are probably one of the most frequent things I will look up. I don’t know why it took me so long to actually try and implement a routine in my own life, but better late than never I suppose. When creating your routine, make it YOURS. Try different things, I know I’ll be continuing to experiment as time goes on.
Whether you plan on having one or not, whatever you find yourself doing every morning will become your routine. It’s up to you to make one that helps you win the day and not get beaten before your day even starts. This trial was a good test run of a few different approaches to a routine. I think there will definitely be further experimentation down the road, but sticking to a general outline I think helps. For me, that outline is getting in something physical, mental, and a first win.
Next Time on TOBBI
My next trial will be attempting to do some freelance work. I recently acquired an itch to try and do some work on the side to not only build my personal skill set but see what that line of work is truly like. Is this something I’m cut out for? Could I be a self-starter? Or should I stick to my day job? Literally.
The nearby windowsill servers as a good morning routine desk.
Routines, Routine, Routine
The morning routine trial continues! Over the past few weeks, I’ve probably tried at least a dozen different morning activities to get my day started. I’d say it’s been going well, and here’s a quick rundown of some of the activities I’ve been trying so far.
Physical Primer
With a fairly small apartment in which getting outside becomes a task in of itself, I’ve been starting the day out with a variety of calisthenics and body weight exercises followed immediately by some stretching.
Push-ups, sit-ups, and squats were all fairly effective, but I don’t think anything has been as beneficial as jumping jacks. They’re easy to do and you can start immediately after standing up, but loosen up stiff joints and get your heart rate up to wake up the body. Depending on how much time I have to spare in the morning, I’ve gone anywhere from 30 to 90 seconds of jumping jacks to loosen up before starting to stretch.
When stretching, I focus carefully on loosening up my spine. It’s perhaps a variety of factors, but my lower back is pretty atrocious. Just turning or bending forward slightly leads to a few cracks in my back in the morning. With my recent yoga trial, I’ve tried incorporating a few poses I learned in the weeks of trying that out (here’s a link to part one of that trial if you’re interested). In particular, Cat-To-Cow and some poses in Warrior 2 (that I don’t know the names of) are the most beneficial I’ve seen work for me. I’ll usually top things off by bending forward initiating the previously mentioned back cracks and trying to feel each vertebra stretch apart. From there I’ll shake out the rest of my body with arm/shoulder circles and leg stretches.
Mental Prep
When waking my mind up, I’ve been long reading The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman. I started reading the book at the beginning of the year, and have done so every day since January first. I’ve tried a few other approaches in addition to this, but haven’t found one I’m ultimately sold on.
So far, I’ve tried both guided meditation and journaling (which I also tried in a previous trial, these things just keep popping up, huh?). For meditation, I am a decent fan of guided meditation, but more so as a place to start. I found a meditation before bed that seems to knock me out cold, as the guide gets me out of my head and into my body then is silent for a few minutes. I’ve rarely been awake to hear his closing statements. I’ve tried a few morning meditations, but none have quite gotten my mind hacked like my nightly meditation.
If you have any good meditation suggestions, please let me know in the comments.
Earning the First Win
This has been the single most difficult piece of my morning routine puzzle. Trying to come up with something every day has been pretty tough. There have been a few that were relatively simple. Many have just been maintenance tasks that during the day I tend to forget, but others have been plans to make the rest of the day or week go a bit more smoothly.
Today, for example, my objective was to come up with a podcast topic to record another episode this coming weekend, keep your eyes peeled for that! Another day, I simply fixed a part of my bike that had bent a bit and needed to be put back in the right place.
Overall, my goal is to try and simplify my day by taking just a few minutes each morning. I don’t think any routine I’ve done has taken more than 25 minutes. This next week, try some of what I’ve done above on just one day and see how it changes the rest of your day or your entire week!
The morning and evening act as the bookends of your day. If one is thrown off, the other is going to feel it.
Due to many different factors lately, my nights have been off balance. This has led to me waking up late, having rough insomnia, or even simply not planning for my mornings well at all. Ultimately, this causes my mornings to be not as easy going as I would hope. There have been multiple nights, this past week where I’ve set my intentions and goals for the morning before bed, but could not fall asleep if my life depended on it. I’ve been on and off, almost interchanging days on a schedule. There have been days that I’ve been able to do a short workout, read, and accomplish something before leaving the house heading to work. Other days, I might just barely get one of the three done before rushing to work and starting my day there.
My Evening Routine (Or Lack Thereof)
In the process of this trial, I’ve had to create a bit of a nightly routine in order to get into the swing of things. Unfortunately, I totally screwed up my sleep schedule with some poor sleep this past weekend, I blame daylight savings changes. This has broken up my mornings pretty bad. I’m still pushing to get my three pieces of routine in, but it’s a struggle I don’t accomplish every day.
Even waking up late, I try to take a breath and stick to what I need to do in the morning. If I panic and rush through everything, the rest of my day is in a panic. Monday this week, I woke up later than I needed to and tried to rush through my morning. The rest of the day I felt like an amorphous blob just getting by.
Tuesday, I woke up a bit late again but slowed myself down. I took the minute or so extra to do things right, and it benefited the rest of my day. Allowing myself the time to get what I needed to done cascaded into the other aspects of my day. At work, I felt better and more focused, at home, I could concentrate on what I needed, and at night, I was able to set myself up for getting to bed on time.
All of this has gotten me thinking about creating a better routine before bed. Ideally, I would like to start winding down from 9-10 PM, put on a pot of water, and make some good night time tea, preferably this tea from Yogi at the moment ( not a sponsored link or anything, just what I could find online). At that point, reading a good book. From the research I’ve done, fiction is best to read before bed, because it helps reduce the problem solving our brains try to do. Though sometimes for me, even fiction will get my mind spiraling down some rabbit hole of research or investigation. If you have good fiction recommendations, let me know. I’m hoping to try and find some good books to help wind down instead of riling myself up.
Make Good Choices
The first step to creating a good morning routine is creating a good routine before bed. Proper preparation for the morning makes everything easier. Pick the clothes you’ll wear to work. Make sure you set up systems to make your routine easier. Good systems will beat willpower any day.
Depending on how the rest of this week goes, I may write more on evening routines as well those for the morning. I’ll be experimenting with some different tactics for sure. Be sure to drop by next week for updates!
Creating a personal morning routine has been something I’ve tried here and there, but nothing has really stuck. I think trying out some different things and thinking out the successes and failures in writing will help me, and possibly you, find a good routine and stick to it.
Over the past week, I’ve started my mornings with three things a physical stimulus, mental stimulus, and a first win of the day. I’ve tried a couple of different approaches to each but will continue trying new ones over the next few weeks.
To start things out, I usually try to wake my body up. The goal here isn’t to exhaust myself, but to simply shake out from laying in a bed for hours. This past weekend, I was lucky enough to A) have warm weather to go outside in shorts and a t-shirt and B) be in a convenient spot to go outside easily, my grandpa’s house. Because of this, I was able to try out a recommendation from a YouTube video that helped get the ball rolling for this, jump roping in the sun for a few minutes. Afterward, spending a few minutes with some dynamic stretches, which involve moving the body around instead of stretch-and-hold type stretches. So far this has been my favorite, though I think largely due to the rarity of the weather previously stated in the Midwest during early March. Other than the jump rope + stretch, I’ve done a combination of jumping jacks, push-ups, and sit-ups with some brief stretching. Both accomplished the base goal, to get the body moving and awake.
Once my blood was flowing and my body was ready to start the day, I then would shift my focus to my mind. Thus far, I’ve tried both reading and meditation as methods of mental priming for the day. I’ve tried meditation before, and it was often the final part of my yoga practices, but for some reason, I can never stick to it. I will admit, doing it right off the bat in the morning has made it more enjoyable. Getting my mind on a certain wavelength early in the day has helped me get a hold of my mind when it starts to stray from that wavelength, usually down a path to a dark or at best unproductive place. Morning meditation has helped me to build a foundation for the day, usually giving myself some positive mantra I can tell myself when my mind wanders to bring me back to where I need to be.
A specific example of this involves when I went to see some friends this past weekend while spending some time in my hometown. For whatever reason my mind was throwing negative thoughts my way and I was feeling kind of bummed out, but then I just repeated some of the phrases in that meditation, which to be honest I can’t even think of right now, and I was right back where I wanted to be, having fun and sharing stories.
The final piece of my routine puzzle is to set my day up with a win. This can be easier or harder depending on planning the prior night. Most mornings so far, I’ve come up with what I want to tackle before going to bed and put it on my to-do list. This makes jumping into that task fast and easy, and most things I can wrap up in a matter of minutes. The nights that I didn’t come up with a first win, I spend more time coming up with what to do than the actual task takes. The beauty of the first win is that it doesn’t need to be overly complicated. A few simple examples from just this past week are tidying up my car and setting up my mail list template.
The key element of your first win is to accomplish something in the day. Have you ever had a day where you look back and can’t think of anything you “accomplished” and think “today was a waste?” Getting yourself a win right away gives you momentum to push thru the rest of the day. The win can be small maintenance tasks, most of mine from this week have been, but can also be progress on personal projects, side-hustles, creative work, etc. The win can be big or small, it’s up to you to define it.
Forgiving Yourself
I’ll come right out and say it, I did not accomplish my routine every morning. On the very day I’m typing this, I woke up nearly an hour later than expected and had to rush over to work to get in at a reasonable time, not necessarily “on-time.”
Tim Ferriss has a great quote that he uses when discussing following a diet plan, “The decent method you follow is better than the perfect method you quit.” This quote came to me as I made my way into work. I missed a day so I have two options, tell myself I have to quit completely because I missed one day, or just move on and try to set up better systems to avoid this in the future. Something about option two feels a bit better, I can’t quite put my finger on it.
All in all, it’s important to forgive yourself for mistakes. They will happen.
Lessons Learned
The major lesson I’ve learned in week one has been that the success of your morning routine relies on the prior evening. If I didn’t set myself up for a successful morning, it’s not likely one will just happen by chance. Getting to bed at a decent time and deciding on a win to start the day are two simple steps that can be taken to set up your morning for success.
A second lesson I took away was the concept of moving past one bad day. It may sound obvious, but when you’re in the shoes of the person who messed up a plan you feel thrown off. I was overwhelmed with a feeling of “why do this tomorrow if you didn’t today?” Luckily, I shortly answered something along the lines of “because it’s good for me.” Messing up is tough, but it’s going to happen. Forgive yourself and keep moving forward.
Now that I’ve had a full four week run at experimenting with yoga, what are my thoughts? My key takeaways from the experience fall into a few categories. Health and fitness benefits, social benefits and the impact of coaching on getting better.
Health Benefits
Flexibility was always felt out of reach for me…see what I did there?
Saying that yoga has some great health benefits may seem obvious to some and questionable to others. For me personally, I found great benefits in recognizing imbalances on each side of my body and as already mentioned flexibility. The focus on holding poses for building muscle strength was interesting as well, as my background in conditioning was always very lifting oriented. Whenever a hold type exercise was on the agenda, I struggled with things like wall sits, but now I definitely see the impact after
The biggest takeaway I learned about my body by far was finding imbalances that I don’t think I would’ve noticed otherwise. There are a few spots, but especially in my hips that my right side feels much stronger and more capable. I experienced this with a number of poses that I was able to find easily on my right side, but as soon as weight shifted over, I struggled to maintain it. I hope to use this knowledge to try and correct these imbalances to the best of my ability.
If you’ve read any of my posts for this trial, I’m sure you’ve read me mention the benefits I’ve seen in the regular stretching yoga required of me, so I won’t bore anyone too much. In addition to stretches, the actual workout element of some poses was pretty intense. Shifting body weight into a shoulder stand can be brutal on the shoulders and back muscles, and be a damned good workout.
Social Benefits of Yoga
There is a huge community of yoga enthusiasts out there. Nearly every class I went to was packed from wall to wall with other students. If you are looking for a community of very welcoming and kind people, I definitely recommend checking out a class. Anyone who has participated in a class can likely reassure this point.
There will clearly be differences ranging from geography down to specific instructors, but I really do think the community deserves a highlight. If you’re not able to join a class, there is a great presence online as well. For the first two weeks, I followed along with a completely free program on YouTube and that was one series of hundreds of videos on the channel.
Benefits of Having a Coach
It may sound self-explanatory, and I suppose I didn’t really know what I had until it was gone, but the influence of a coach is extraordinary. As an athlete for most of my schooling years, I had many coaches throughout my life and I would easily say most of them had a huge impact on who I’ve become as a person. After graduating college, I no longer had a coach, yet it wasn’t until this point that I actually realized how beneficial having a coach is. A coach serves a number of roles including holding you liable, constructing a program for you to follow and adviser on a number of decisions, in and outside of their area of expertise.
When I decided to go to an actual studio, it made a huge difference in my practice. Having someone around to help ensure I was doing a pose correctly was worlds different than standing in my living room, assuming (hoping) I was doing it right. I remember one day, in particular, I was holding a pose, and the instructor walked up and slightly adjusted the way my hips were facing and I felt on a different level. Likely seeing the expression on my face change from relaxed to “Oh shit!” She simply said something along the lines of, “see how much more you feel that.”
What I’m Doing Next
I hope you enjoyed following along my journey so far and would love to hear if you gave yoga a try at all. Leave a comment below or hit me up on twitter.
Now for my next trial. It was slightly inspired by waking up extra early to make some classes before leaving for work, crafting a morning routine. Creating a good morning routine is something I’ve tried from time to time, but haven’t fully gotten one down yet. I fall in and out of different routines, and right now it pretty much consists of reading a quick page from The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and making my bed. Finally biking over to work to start my day for real. I want to try new activities and see what their impact is. I came up with the following buckets of tasks to do each morning. I plan to do something that falls into each of the following each morning: physical priming, mental priming, and achieving the first win of the day before leaving for work. I’ll go a bit more into detail in a future post, but to generalize: Physical priming will be a brief 5-10 minutes of exercise to wake up the body. Mental priming will be waking up the mind thru different practices like journaling, meditating or reading. The first win of the day involves accomplishing a task of some sort. Could be progress on a project, hobby or as simple as making one’s bed.
I hope you’re looking forward to this next trial as much as I am. If you want to join in, let me know and I’ll be sure to give you a big shout out in the next post!
Finally pulled it off! I went to a yoga class and was not disappointed. I’ve been to a few classes in just a couple of days and really enjoyed the experience.
As soon as I shook off the nasty cold I had, I was totally ready to hop in a class. The schedule was a bit tough to fit into my normal week, so I made sure to move some things around to give some of the different classes a try.
Some of the classes were just like the video series I was following along at home, a variety of poses to build a combination of strength, balance, and flexibility. One of the classes, however, was pretty intense. A class called Yin focused on stretching and opening up connective tissue which involved holding some stretches for what felt like an eternity when holding just a single pose. One of the poses stretched out the glutes and hamstrings incredibly, in regular yoga it’s called the pigeon pose but in Yin, it’s called swan if I remember correctly.
The regular practice has made me feel amazing over the past few weeks. I couldn’t say all the tightness and soreness has been eradicated from my body, but damn do I feel better. The other morning when walking out of my apartment to head to work, right after I came from a class, I felt like my legs were floating. I would recommend everyone at least give yoga a try, even just following along with online videos for free, but a class is where you will see major progress start.
I’ve really enjoyed this trial so far and hope some of you were able to join along with this one or have at least been inspired to give yoga a try. Be sure to come by next week when I reveal what I’ll be getting myself into next!
Trying Out Before Buying In 