You might remember that back in May, I signed up for Marianne Elliott‘s 30 Days of Yoga for people too busy to do yoga.  I’ve been following Marianne’s blog since her days as a UN peacekeeper in Afghanistan, admiring her openness and honesty about such challenging and emotionally taxing work.  I was intrigued by how she used yoga as a way to balance and center herself, so when she began offering online 30-day yoga courses, I knew my time for yoga had arrived.

Still, there was something holding me back — the time, the effort, my inflexibility (literally and figuratively).  But the perfect moment, Marianne announced a new course for busy people to her lineup (which includes yoga-for-beginners and curvy yoga too!).  Of course we are all busy, but this course is perfect for those people (like me), who let the idea of being too busy get in the way of doing something good for our bodies.

Marianne sent us a number of different video yoga sessions — including 5-minute breathing practices, 10-minutes of Savasana, 10- and 15-minute standing and spinal practices, as well as a longer 20-minute practice.  Starting slow in the first week and building the practices over time allowed me to learn some of the yoga basics, thanks to Marianne’s careful instruction.

I still stick to some of the “beginner” poses (there’s no way you’re getting me into a full back bend), and I can’t always get my body to stretch as nicely as I would like, but I’m noticing progress.  I  appreciated that she offered differing levels of difficulty within some of the poses that I could choose from to fit my body best.  And now that the course is “officially” over, I have a nice library of different home practices that I can mix and match, according to my needs and schedule.

I’ll be honest and say that I didn’t practice yoga every single day over the 30-days — but that’s really beside the point.  The course is perfectly low-threshold, which allowed me to practice as little or as much as I wanted — really, who can’t find 10 spare minutes?  So I ended up practicing more yoga in the last month than I have in my life.  Maybe more importantly, I feel like I am walking away with a good foundation to build upon. And I have the will to keep at it.  Who knows, maybe someday I’ll even become flexible??

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Full disclosure: I recently joined Marianne’s Gratitude and Generosity Initiative, meaning that if you sign up for her courses by clicking on any of her links on this blog, she will thank me for sending you her way.  If you have been reading this blog for awhile, you know that I only rave about things that I whole-heartedly believe in — and I would have been raving to you about 30 Days of Yoga with or without the initiative!