Time to Read: ~7 minYou can read more about how I came to the practice originally, and more about the yoga itself in my prior post.
Once our studio closed during the pandemic, we did this style yoga with them online for a bit from our bathroom, and then I did some Ashtanga style yoga using YouTube. Once the world opened up, we went back to Kelly’s Vinyasa and got a membership to Find What Feels Good Yoga for yoga at home. That worked so well for us that when my friend Laurel told me about YogOdyssey opening, I told her that I was not paying for yoga classes anymore and didn’t think I’d go back. She was so understanding, but said it was amazing and thought I’d really love it. My friend Kathleen also mentioned it, and she was the person who had originally gotten me involved. I told her the same thing. My budget was used to no yoga payments. It has been a couple years now, so my memory of exactly how it went down is vague, but I believe Kathleen and I were on a hike and she commented about it again and mentioned she had guest passes. I thought, “why not just try it?” I didn’t end up using one of her passes, but the studio has a nice introductory offer for a very low priced first month. I went once and came home thinking “I need to go back.” I brought Scott and when we came home together our kids looked at us and said, “are we paying for yoga again?” “Yes.” It was agreed. We had missed this and there was a place in our life for it again.
The 30 Day Challenge
Fast forward a couple of years of regular attendance (at the time that we started the challenge, I had logged 246 classes) and it was time to consider pushing ourselves.
In our yoga studio, sometimes people opt in to their own 30 day challenge for hot yoga. Scott and I go twice a week without fail, but always find ourselves intrigued and motivated by the people going for the challenge. Studio owners Jackie and Mark have a board where you can “sign-up” for a challenge. It can be any time of year and it can really be any challenge you decide you are up for, though most if not all folks have set the 30 day challenge as the goal. This means you take 30 classes in 30 days. You can attend class in the studio or virtually, and you can do more than one in a day if you need to miss a day (or just want to do it that way). Scott and I talked romantically about doing a holiday to holiday challenge - starting with Thanksgiving and going through the New Year (a bit more than 30 days) but then started to think about the weather, potential travel, and the general hectic nature of that time of year. I think we both knew it was unlikely that would be a good time for us, and then somehow we both converged on June - July. It was a quick conversation; we’d start after his already planned business trip in June and go until his birthday on July 11th. We’d have to double up one day due to a prior commitment volunteering for a race all day, but other than that, we were able to go each day.
What to Wear?
If you read my original post about how I came to love hot yoga, you learned that I started yoga to have an excuse to wear fun yoga clothes. While I’m still not very good at buying clothing, I’ve gotten better and sometimes I can just do what must be done.
Standing head to knee pose
As the challenge approached, I realized I’d quickly get frustrated with my clothing options. I have 3 bra tops that I cycle between and one pair of mid thigh leggings as well as one long pair. With the hot summer temperatures and the hot room, the long pair wasn’t really the best fit, and the bra tops are really long. I felt this challenge presented an opportunity for me to get used to wearing a little less clothing. I decided I didn’t want to spend much money on things though, and I didn’t feel like shopping in person, so I ordered a very cheap 3 pack of shorts for $27 online, and pulled out 3 bras that I’ve never worn. I also finally spent a gift card Xander gave me for LuluLemon over a year ago to buy another pair of mid thigh leggings.
Show up. Do the work. Let it go.
This style of yoga is 90 minutes of the same set of postures in the same order every class. When I tell my friends about it someone inevitably says, “Why would you do the same thing in every class in a hot, humid space. Don’t you get bored?” The answer to that is an emphatic “NO!”
My mom, my mother-in-law, and I all used to make the same chocolate chip cookie recipe yet our cookies looked and tasted very different. Different temperature ingredients, different ovens, different mixing times. They all created slightly different cookies even though the recipe was the same.
It is the same with yoga. Each instructor has a unique style. For some it is reading inspiring passages, others include medical benefits or moments of intentional silence. Everyone in the studio includes grateful tapping with one posture, and “party time” for our one official water break (though you can have water whenever you need it) and then there are the great references to types of food to describe the postures. (A party idea has been hatched from this).
In this 30 day journey, my favorite clip from one of Jackie’s readings was “Show up. Do the work. Let it go.” Relevant to yoga and relevant to life in so many ways. I’m great at showing up and doing the work (most of the time), but letting it go and trusting the process is something I can always work on.
I took a picture the first day, and then every increment of 10% through the challenge.
Yoga. Rest. Repeat.
When other people tackled this challenge, I was in awe of them. A larger cohort of folks tend to do it in January as a New Year challenge. Each year as this starts I would come to class and see the challengers. They formed a little bond just by being in class after class together. A community was formed for them, and also for the rest of us as we recognize we can do hard things.
When I started my own challenge, it was just Scott and me. After all, June is a weird time to do a hot yoga challenge. It worked for us, but I get how many folks wonder why you would go into a hot space in an already hot time of year. People started saying, “wow” and asking questions about how it was going. Sometimes we heard the words I often said to others when they were in their own challenge, “I could never do that.”
I could though. It is just like doing a speed workout. Every time I’ve ever done a track workout I have that moment where I think, “I can’t do this.” And then, the watch starts and I run. I rest. And then I run again. Once my challenge started, I just did it. Go to yoga. Go home and rest (and do laundry). Repeat the next day.
Post-completion silliness
What happens during a 30 day challenge?
So many people wondered. “Did you notice any changes?”
Yes.
I noticed that class goes by a little faster when you go more often.
I laid down less.
I negotiated with myself less.
I tried harder - most of the time.
I was able to disengage my mind more often, focusing on just the yoga.
I started to enjoy the class during the class instead of just after.
I touched my heels during camel. Twice.
When the student is ready, the teacher is there.
Early in our time in the studio, our friend Laurel gave us a book about Bikram yoga. I have read bits and pieces of it over time, and our challenge felt like the perfect time to bring it out to read with more attention. Every day I read about a pose or two, focusing on the benefits and the journey. There is a pose called Balancing Stick that I never really tried hard to do properly before doing this challenge. It calls for a 10 second hold on each side, a rather short hold in this style of yoga, and I always figured it was over so fast that I didn’t need to try. In the book, they suggested that you consider that you are standing in a swamp filled with alligators and only your standing leg is protected from them. The rest of your body must remain properly in the pose to avoid being eaten by the hungry alligators. I don’t want to be eaten by alligators, and suddenly I worked a bit harder in the pose! Little things like this resonated with me to help me improve my effort on individual poses.
Which was harder, day 1 or day 29?
On day 29, one of our classmates asked “Which was harder, day 1 or day 29?” I quickly answered “day 1.” Day one felt scary. I wasn’t sure if we could do it. It felt like we were taking a giant bite of something we were not quite ready for. By 29, I felt like we could keep doing this for quite a bit of time if we wanted to. It felt familiar and fun.
One thing that was really cool about the challenge and community was that there was a fellow student in our class who we noticed was attending almost every class we were at. I asked her if she was doing a 30 day challenge. She laughed and said, “No, I’m just always here.” The next day in class she said she was going to do the challenge. Emma is more than halfway through her own 30 days now!
At the start of this post, I shared that we had been taking classes twice a week for quite a bit of time now. Ironically, it is easier to take classes more frequently. Your body gets used to the poses and you stay in a more stretched out state. Following the challenge, we plan to switch to a three times weekly! I’m pretty excited about this switch and after our 30 day challenge I know we can do it.
Outside the studio in Ithaca's Fall Creek neighborhood