Yoga every other day

I’ve had a lifelong weird relationship with exercise. One issue I have with building good habits (like exercise) is that I tend to turn things into a project and then become a maximalist about it: I’ll design a routine for myself and get really thrown off when I don’t manage to stick with my plan hundred percent. Missing one of the three planned runs for the week, for example, becomes something that’s hard for me to recover from, and at some point, it becomes so frustrating that I end up abandoning the habit altogether.

A while back, I read on Derek Wessman’s blog that one of his resolutions for 2024 was to run every single damn day¹, and I thought: this is exactly the kind of thing I need to do!

Although not exactly: I’m not in a place in my life where I can realistically commit to doing anything at all every single day, especially not something as involved as running², so I needed a different plan. This is what I came up with:

I would do a short yoga session first thing in the morning, every other day, and I would also allow myself to skip a day if something unexpected happens — I’d just do the planned session the next day.

I started this in the first days of the new year, and it’s worked really well so far! I ended up skipping a few times because of being ill or parenting emergencies, but this has been rare, and, because of the flexible nature of the plan, I recovered from each skip quickly by simply pushing the session to the following morning.

The logistics have been extremely simple: I already get up in the early mornings to work on Parts, so in addition to preparing my workspace in the kitchen, I also lay out my mat on the floor, and start my day with yoga, before even brewing coffee. These days I’m doing 20- and 30-minute sessions on Apple Fitness+ with Dice Iida-Klein, and these have been great: manageable chunks with enough of a workout to get me moving and make me sweat.

It’s worth noting that I’m not a total beginner at yoga: my lovely partner, T., has introduced me to the practice a few years ago, and I’ve been practising at yoga studios, and with teachers who corrected my poses. I would not recommend starting with video sessions if you’re a brand new yogi!

After three months of this, I’ve noticed some results for sure. I feel I became stronger, and my chaturangas have finally developed proper form. My balance is also better: I’ve gotten fairly good at balance poses like Warrior 3 and Half-Moon. My current frontier is the Crow Pose, I would be delighted if I could manage it before the end of the year.

I’ve also noticed that I am more grounded on days that begin on the mat. I feel good about life, more positive, and have an easier time focusing on those days.

It seems like a recurring theme of my 40s is learning, again and again, that sustained, kinda-flexible practice in small manageable chunks beats trying to exert my willpower and force change to happen quickly — I’m looking forward to when this kind of thinking becomes my new default.