Day 41: Skip, and Why It's Okay.

Work was long and sleep was short. After 8 hours at the shop, my friend Catie spent an hour talking to me about my yoga practice and re-balancing my body with some much needed acupuncture (she even brought me slowly back to myself with tuning forks - awesome). Post needles, I went home and started working on a chem lab report, homework, reading and prep-work for a new lab assignment; all of which needs to be done by tomorrow except for my homework, which is due in 2 hours. 5:30 sneaked up on me and I had to postpone my yoga until the 7:30 class. It's now 7:25 and I am still in my house, finishing up work. Today will have to be a skip. And that's alright.

During my talk with Catie (and numerous other yogis - especially Jill from wandering yoga), we discussed the importance of yoga as an honored time for yourself, not an obligation to further stress over. When you try to squeeze in 2 hours for yoga and class suddenly becomes an obstacle in your day, it's alright to skip. You can make up the time. Right now, finishing all my class work for tomorrow is more important than going to a yoga class that I would view as time consuming, instead of liberating. So instead of fretting over one missed day, I'm going to do 30 minutes of svaroopa yoga before bed. I'm going to finish all of my work in the next 2 hours and get to sleep by 10. I'm going to get 8 hours of restful, restorative sleep. I'm going to listen to my body; it's telling me to take a breath and take a break.

Class: Svaroopa yoga: The Magic 4
Instructor: Me
Studio: My living room with a chair, my mat and a stack of books serving as yoga blocks.
Wins: Breathing; Finishing all of my work; 8 hours of much needed sleep.