Just thought I'd share what I'm up to re: exercise at the moment, which is something that has gone by the wayside for me lately! I thought posting here would help me clarify my goals and help me stick to them (plus some public accountability never fails!).
I've being doing yoga for about 10 years, and while I'm intermediate / advanced on some things, there are still many things I've never progressed past beginner stage on. This is probably because I've never established a regular schedule and have been rather sporadic in my practice. I fell out of a daily yoga practice a few months ago due to a combi of overdoing it, having too high expecations and getting bored with the same routine.
I've now decided to re-implement a daily yoga practice, but to limit myself to 15-20 minutes every morning, and to have a range of default activities to choose from so I don't really have an excuse to not move myself, for example:
My #1 aim is to get on my yoga mat each morning and do a simple 15 minute routine (or 15 mins from one of my many DVDs) followed by some meditation (no time limit here, just whatever feels right - this tends to naturally be about 5 mins).
If I get to my yoga mat and really can't face starting those sun salutations, I'll go out for a 15 min walk instead (what better way to "salute the sun" than to go walking at dawn!).
If I am so lazy that I don't want to do yoga or go walking (if it's snowing or something LOL), then I'll do 15 mins on my stepper (something I can do and read a good book at the same time which is an additional motivator LOL).
The idea is, that I'll establish a habit of moving myself for 15 minutes every morning in some way, and only when that is established I'll think about actually making progress with my yoga practice (trying more advanced stuff, spending more time on it etc.). I don't want to make the mistake I made before which was try to establish a daily yoga habit, and do it perfectly and do lots of advanced stuff all at once LOL
I'm aiming to just do this on N days and keep weekends open - some weekends I might feel like starting the day in the same way, but if I don't "have to" then I won't feel bad if I skip it! Often at weekends I get in some other exercise anyway.
I started this new plan today, I did the first 15 mins of one of my fave yoga DVDs (one of Baron Baptiste's Live series, I find these the closest you can get to going to a class, without actually going to a class) followed by some meditation. I did feel like I could do more, but I stopped myself because now I can look forward to doing more of the DVD tomorrow.
A little thing that helped ensure I did this was that last night I put my yoga clothes in the bathroom ready for me to get into after my morning shower - this meant that when I got out of the shower I had no excuses! (I also had my work outfit picked out the night before so I didn't have to cut short my yoga time to figure out what to change into).
The only thing I had to do after the yoga was eat, drink tea, quick-tidy my kitchen, brush teeth, dress for work and put make-up on - all easy auto-pilot stuff which I can do in 20 mins.
I've realised that its not having to do things in the morning which takes time, it's having to make decisions about doing things, so having the clothes all ready helped, I also had the DVD selected the night before, my yoga mat out etc. I also made sure my chores were done the night before, kitchen tidy etc. so I had minimal domestic stuff to do in the morning (just tidying up after myself and folding some laundry) as another common excuse I use not to exercise is that I have "more important" things to do like chores.
All this is made even easier by the fact that my other half wakes much later than me (he is a night owl, I'm an early bird
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
Wish me luck!
Thanks
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