Doing yoga every day for 30 days: What sounds exhausting for some was incredibly good for me. The self-experiment was not always easy for me, but I learned a lot – also about myself.
At the beginning of January, I was told: I want to get on the yoga mat every day for 30 days. In the following I report how I feel after the challenge, what made me persevere – and what I would do differently in hindsight.
Why a Yoga Challenge?
The most common New Year’s resolutions? Every year the following is mentioned: do more exercise or sport and take more time for yourself. Since I want to give both things (more) time in my everyday life, I decided to do a special self-experiment at the beginning of January. I signed up for the 30-day yoga challenge that yoga teacher, YouTuber, and blogger Mady Morrison has been offering for six straight years. There they put together a training plan that includes a different yoga session every day.
For me, yoga means time that I consciously perceive and a physical activity that brings me down and relaxes me, but at the same time challenges me a little physically. I find it particularly practical that I can do yoga at any time and from home – without any preparation time.
Yoga is not completely new territory for me, I have been practicing it more or less regularly for years. Since autumn I have been attending a weekly course. But doing yoga every day, I’ve only managed to do that once so far and the corona pandemic with a lot of time at home played a big part in that. Time to try again under “normal” conditions.
Yoga every day – doesn’t that get monotonous?
My plan was as follows: On Wednesdays I attend the yoga class on site as usual, on the other days of the week I do the units from the “Inner Awakening” yoga challenge at home, which Mady Morrison put together.
The nice thing about the challenge: Every day there is a new sequence with a different focus on the program. Sometimes you mainly strengthen the middle of the body, sometimes hip or heart openers are in the foreground. From 15-minute morning yoga to a 45-minute unit of Yin Yoga (here you hold the positions for several minutes), you can complete a varied full-body workout.
My yoga diary
Day 1-11: I started the first day full of motivation. This continued unabated for eleven days. I usually made time for yoga right after work, sometimes I used the lunch break, sometimes I started the day with a short yoga session. According to the challenge plan, slightly longer sequences of around 45 minutes are planned for the weekend, which I was able to plan well.
Day 12-14: The first challenge – I had traveled to Rome by night train. When I left, I wasn’t sure if and how I would do my yoga sessions there. But on two out of three days I did yoga in the hotel room and realized that it works pretty well. However, I had deliberately saved shorter sessions for the vacation days and either shot the longer sessions at home beforehand or put them off after the trip to Rome. The one day I missed, when I didn’t do yoga in Rome, I took home as a souvenir.
Day 15-25: After two weeks of yoga, a certain routine set in; my printed training plan on my desk didn’t have to remind me that I “had to” do yoga today. Much more, the yoga unit developed into a fixed and beautiful part of my day.
Day 25-30: Admittedly, the challenge did not go entirely smoothly. I didn’t find time for yoga every day. For example, when I didn’t go home after work, but went to dinner and then to the cinema. When I got home I went straight to bed and saved myself the “detour” via the yoga mat.
How I dealt with the missed units? Sometimes I made up for it the following day or at the weekend and let myself be guided through two yoga units a day, for example in the morning and after work. If that wasn’t possible, I simply added the missing days to the 30-day challenge. That’s why my yoga challenge didn’t last 30, but 33 days.
Self-experiment yoga challenge: You should pay attention to this
One of my most important insights from the 30-day yoga challenge: You should never let a missed yoga session keep you from the overall task. Finally, you can catch up on the exercise or simply extend the challenge by the days without yoga.
How do you find the time and motivation for yoga every day? I can say for myself: I can take the time every day – if I want. On days in the home office, I liked to do the yoga units directly after work or during the lunch break. Both helped a lot when switching off. I rarely had motivation problems. It then helped me to think about the satisfied feeling after training to get started.
For everyone who, like me, likes to proceed in a structured way, I have a tip: print out the yoga plan (Mady Morrison provides a calendar with the daily units for download for the 30-day challenge) or save it digitally and tick off each completed session. So you can see the progress every day and have a small sense of achievement. At the same time you notice how quickly the 30 days go by – that can be really motivating. If you don’t follow a fixed course schedule, you can still highlight the days on which you practiced yoga in color in the calendar.
Conclusion: This is what the Yoga Challenge did
Yoga helps me switch off and even reduced my headaches for two days. I was also able to notice a small physical difference: I notice that I’m more flexible – and that with some characters it still depends on the shape of the day. Sometimes it’s really easy for me to balance, sometimes I’m swaying back and forth on one leg. The strength in the arms is not always the same.
In the meantime, however, I have also understood: Yoga is incredibly multifaceted, there is no one yoga style. For example, over the past few weeks I’ve found out that slow Yin Yoga isn’t my preference, but it’s just right on some days (for example, when I’ve been jogging and use it to stretch my muscles).
Above all, the yoga challenge showed me that I can manage to take a small time slot just for myself every day and fill it as I want. The exercises are a nice option for me, but sometimes I prefer a good book or a walk. That’s why I won’t be doing yoga every day anymore, but I plan to do it two to three days a week.
If you are interested in yoga, also read:
- Yoga for beginners – these tips will make it easier for you to get started
- Yoga accessories: what you need for training
- 14 Sustainable Yoga Brands & Labels: Eco Yoga Clothing & Co.
- Yoga in bed: The 6 best exercises for a morning or evening routine
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