Countdown!

NaYoPracMo begins tomorrow!  We have about 22 people signed up, bloggers and non-bloggers.  Zazazu has offered to contribute a handmade yoga bag to our stash of prizes!  The biggest prize, though will be to see what daily practice brings, for all of us.

And now before I throw myself into New Year’s party prep, I will leave you with this thought for the day:

“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.” — Seneca

Hope you all have a wonderful evening of celebrating the coming of a New Year, and I’ll see you on the mat tomorrow!

Buttons Are Available!

If you look to the “Pages” links on my sidebar to the right, you will see a link called “Banners or Buttons.”  YogaSpell has kindly created a couple of buttons that you can put in the sidebar of your blog if you’d like to identify yourself as a NaYo’er!

Many thanks to YogaSpell!  There are many benefits to being married to a computer geek!

Register for Valuable Prizes!

Or maybe not that valuable…but I am offering a couple of Nirvana candles to folks who successfully complete the NaYoPracMo challenge and Tim has offered up a black mat!  So if you leave me a note in the comments or email me at yogagumbo (atsign) gmail (dot) com, you can consider yourself “registered.”

Mostly I’m just curious about who’s participating and I’d love to follow everyone’s progress throughout the month!  I’ll link to your blog if you have one and if not, feel free to update us via comments or email me and I’ll post your report!

What’s the Plan?

When I have a big project coming up, I try to think of all of the potential things that might impact it, and plan ahead.  For example, during NaNoWriMo, I went to Dream Dinners and prepared 12 frozen dinners to have on busy weeknights.  That saved me a lot of time in meal planning,  grocery shopping and cooking.

For NaYoPracMo, I’d like to have a plan.  But I don’t!  We have houseguests and I feel like I’m barely treading water with all of the daily basics — cooking, laundry, keeping the house picked up.  Sunday night we’re having a big New Year’s party, and next week we might be going up to the mountains.  So far my yoga plan is:  take mat and yoga clothes to mountains.   After that, when the kids are back in school, I guess I’ll practice in the early morning.  I think.

Do you have a plan, or are you going to wing it?

What Is a Practice?

In the comments on my last post, Andi posed a very important question: what constitutes a yoga practice? If we commit to practicing yoga for thirty-one days, what are we committing to?

With NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo, the goals were pretty straightforward: 50,000 words written in 30 days, and one blog post a day, respectively. A yoga practice, however, can’t be quantified and pinned down in that way. Everyone’s practice is different. I like Tim’s good definition: “At least 10 minutes in any pose or series of poses, with awareness and breathing, qualifies as a practice.”

I’m going to set a minimum and maximum goal. At the very least, I will commit to 10 minutes a day per Tim’s definition. For my maximum goal — well, I’d like to say six days of full primary series ashtanga vinyasa yoga, but realistically, I think I can commit to four days of full primary, and three days of a reduced practice. Part of what I’d like to find out for myself is what a whole month of primary series, with as few lapses as possible, would feel like for me.

I’m hoping it doesn’t feel like I need to pop Advil like M&Ms.

What are your practice plans?

What About Moon Days?

You may or may not know that the tradition in some schools of yoga is to refrain from practicing the asanas — the physical part of yoga — on days when there is a new moon or a full moon. There is a good explanation of the belief behind this tradition on senior ashtanga teacher Tim Miller’s website. I personally do observe moon days by refraining from asana practice, although I will admit it’s more out of laziness (good excuse not to practice!) than out of reverence for the tradition.

So this begs the question — what to do during NaYoPracMo? If the idea is to practice yoga 31 days in a row, what do you do about moon days? Well, those of you who practice a form of yoga that doesn’t observe moon days will, of course, just do your regular practice on those days. My teacher, Annie Pace, has suggested that on moon days you can do a very light, abbreviated practice — just a few sun salutations, for example, or a couple of restorative poses, or a sitting meditation session. And of course, you can always practice karma yoga — the yoga of service and selfless devotion.

According to my calendar, the moon days for January are the 3rd and the 18th. If you want to track the phases of the moon, here’s a nifty iCal that you can subscribe to!

No, You Don’t Have to Have a Blog

NaYoPracMo is not for bloggers only!  Anyone who wants to try the daily practice is welcome to join in — you are welcome to post short comments here as you practice, or email me anything you’d like to share and I’ll put it up.  I envision this as sort of a communal space for sharing how practice is going, tips and ideas, good online sources for practice ideas, that kind of thing.  I’m planning to list all participants with blogs in my blogroll so we can all see how everyone’s doing.

As far as “winning” goes — y’all are on your honor.  At the end of the month, if you rose to the challenge and practiced every day, you can send me a quick email and I’ll put your name in the hat for a prize!  Don’t get too excited — I’m thinking of a couple of Nirvana Candles or a yoga book.  If anyone wants to donate a prize (it can be something handmade like a scarf or beaded earrings), let me know!  Maybe we can persuade Tim to part with his coveted Manduka mat

I don’t feel a great need to verify anyone’s participation.  This is just for the fun and experience of it!  If you say you practiced every day, that’s good enough for me!

A New Year, A New Beginning

As those of you who read my other blog know, in November I participated in National Novel Writing Month and National Blog Posting Month. Somewhere along the line, I commented that my yoga practice was taking a nosedive, and that I’d need a National Yoga Practice Month to get myself back in gear.

So, that’s what I’m doing. I’m committing to thirty days of yoga practice, for the month of January, and I hope some of you will join me! Whether you’re a hardcore daily-practicing ashtangi, or you don’t know your asana from your elbow, thirty consecutive days of yoga should be a transformative experience.

I am doing this because I am curious to see what effect this consistent practice will have on me. Although I have had phases where I’ve practiced six days a week, I’ve never sustained it consistently for a whole month. Something always comes up. Life gets in the way. You know how it is. But I hope to apply what I learned in NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo — 99% of the battle is making that commitment to show up on the mat every single day.

So, I’m starting on January 1, hangover and all — and I probably will be hungover since we’re planning a New Year’s Eve bash. I’m getting on my yoga mat every day until January 31. It may be only a five-minute practice, or it may be a full 1.5 hour primary series practice. But it will be a practice.

Over the coming days, I’ll talk more about the details but until then, think about joining me! Because I don’t want to suffer alone

p.s. There will be prizes for randomly selected winners! If you think you want to participate, either email me at yogagumbo (atsign) gmail (dot) com or leave a note in the comments!