An Hour a Day

How hard is it to find an hour a day? Pretty hard. At this point in my life I’m only partially employed; teaching yoga and freelancing on the side. I don’t have the typical 40 hour work week that many I know do, nor do I have other obligations such as a spouse or children that I make time for. All in all I have a pretty easy schedule. My day starts like this: wake up, walk the dog, simple meditation, coffee and while I have my dark roasted decaf I look at the day ahead and that’s where I get into trouble. I can over program a schedule by the time I’m down to the last drop. Being a new home owner I have plenty of projects around the house and yard and then there’s the new studio which needs lots of TLC. There are many things to get distracted by and if I don’t plan out my day then I will get distracted or worse forget I had things I wanted to accomplish and do virtually nothing. And even though I am embarrassed to admit it yoga is one of the things that gets forgotten. If I don’t put yoga somewhere on my to do list I will most likely not do it. I am a bad yogi. Or am I?

I would love to say I’m one of those amazing and grounded people who get up every day at 4 and do yoga and meditate for 3 hours, but when it comes right down to it I simply not. I live in the constructs of a modern world so getting up at 4 doesn’t fit into that lifestyle. But what I can do is live within these constructs without losing the integrity of my practice. When I sit down to look at my day not matter how quickly it fills I know to “schedule” and hour for my yoga practice. I may not even get that whole hour I may settle for 20 minutes between jobs or appointments but knowing that I have set aside that time, made room for it in my life, assures me it will happen. Every self help book and guru will tell you take time for you, take time for you; even if it’s just five minutes to have a cup of tea in silence or a walk around the block without your iPod. But I think that for me it goes deeper than that. I don’t do yoga for me; I do yoga for everyone else in my life. Yogic philosophy teaches us to have compassion and respect for everyone and really the heart of it is recognizing the divinity within every person as well as in ourselves. So for me putting yoga on my to do list has less to do with taking time for me or keeping limber but it’s an act of respect. I respect all of the things yoga has to teach me by carving out even 20 minutes to let those lessons have a chance to sink in. If you’ve ever taken a yoga class hopefully you’ve been lucky enough to come up from Savasana feeling so at peace with yourself and the world that you can’t even imagine that horrible mood you were in just yesterday. For me it’s like waking up being madly in love with everything. And no, we don’t get that feeling every yoga class but how amazing would it be to start having more often. What kinds of beautiful things could manifest if we had a little more peace and joy in our lives? I think that’s something worth putting on our to do lists.