30 day challenge update

Day 14 of my 30 day challenge. So far I have managed to do yoga on 8 of the 14 days, with a total of 12.5 hrs across 10 seperate sessions. Not so good. I'm slightly ashamed to admit that it may have to be a 30 hour challenge rather than 30 session challenge.

Why has it been so tricky? There's a few reasons, but the key one is exhaustion. After a run of several long and rather hardcore sessions I found myself having to have the odd day off to recover. I did drag myself to the mat after 1 of my early challenging sessions for a 'gentle yoga' session, but found the experience not so helpful. Following that I took time to recover after particularly challenging sessions and found that a day off meant that when I returned to practice I felt stronger and invigorated. After I discovered this the daily practice target sadly went a little by the wayside.

At this halfway point I return to the original reason for doing this challenge. Jumping from a very irregular practice straight into a hard core month was perhaps not the best idea, but the point behind it was to restart the yoga habit; attending yoga classes & workshops and restarting a home practice. If I get to the end of the month and have met these goals, whether (perhaps an arbitrary) 30 sessions have been completed or not, I will be a happy lady.

On a separate note I've been looking into how to get into Pincha Mayurasana and have found a good progressive build up from Neil Keleher: http://www.sensational-yoga-poses.com/pincha-mayurasana.html. I've been able to do Pincha from headstand (the cheaty way) for a while, but would love to be able to do from kick up (and stay up). Next month I'll look to build up slowly to this challenging posture.