Try the 7 day Yoga Challenge

Struggling with January? Go to a full moon beach party like this and get a photo for Instagram followers to prove you have the perfect life. It was cold on that beach and I couldn’t bring myself to follow the winter swimmers into the sea. So I went home to my trail of abandoned new Year’s resolutions. They are clogging everything up. Which one to choose?

Plan holidays and day trips, clean out all drawers, not just one, declutter everything else, get a new hobby, be creative at all times and do yoga every single day. Give up social media and wine, especially both at the same time, learn to weave willow baskets? Hang on a minute, those baskets will fill up with more clutter. I’ll be cleaning out baskets all day. 

Just pick one thing.  Any one.

Do Yoga every day then.  Tiny steps.  Try it for a week.

Day one.  Adrienne

Google ’20-minute yoga’ and there is Adrienne sitting in the ether waiting for you.

Yoga with Adrienne

Discover I can do all the moves and get through the whole thing without cheating, stopping to look my phone or lying back to stare at the ceiling. After 20 minutes I feel good about myself and Zen because now I am a Yogi who does yoga every day.

Day two. Rest Day

Flick through photos of the garden.

Storm damage to the Polytunnel

Storm Darragh destroyed the polytunnel and everything out there is in a horrible terrible way.  Take obligatory annual photo of snowdrops.

Snowdrops in Devon

Ponder on how I could put either of the above on Instagram to show how perfect, or destroyed, my life is at the moment and marvel at the power of social media.

Do neither.  Forgot to do the Yoga.

Day Three.  Squats day

Remember the Yoga but first I have to go the beach with friends and to see grey skies, murky waves and people getting better mental health in the cold water.

Dog on the beach at Coryton Cove in Dawlish

Do 6,000 steps and eat a teacake.  Come home and read an article about the importance of daily squats.  Realise that if you can’t do squats you are doomed.  Do 3 squats and promise to do the yoga later.  Pleased I can squat.

Day 4.  Sign up to a Yoga Class

No time for daily practice today.  Who actually has 20 minutes to spare?  Notice that the kitchen is 40 years old, rip up a couple of floor tiles to see what it might feel like to start fitting a new floor.

Old cork tiles stuck hard to the floor

Under the floor is full of bad things, including living ones.  Wren Kitchens have a sale of kitchens and they are in fact free because you don’t have to pay for three years and anything can happen in three years.  Researching kitchens takes a lot longer than 20 minutes.

Find another friend for a fresh walk and discuss the yoga class she goes to every week. It is nearby, 6pm on Fridays, only an hour, small, friendly and gentle.  Decide to definitely go to that every single week.  Luckily it is not on this week.

Day 5.  Learn to Appreciate things and Live in the Moment

This is also day 5 of a new teetotal life so wake up unreasonably early and perky.  Who needs a yoga video, just try 5 minutes a day and make up your own yoga class.  It is easy.  ‘Yes’ I thought as I remembered to crick my neck in circles, bend into cat cow and finish with prayer to the dog.  This was much better than the video and went up to 7 minutes in a fit of enthusiasm.

Got the zen back and general appreciation of life.  Took and hour to do a 30 minute cycle because zen appreciation makes you slow down and take photos. This one is called ‘sunshine on a winter canal’.

Exeter canal in Winter

You have to take photos all the way in case, despite living in the moment, you forget the moment later on.

Day 6. 10 minutes with Vanessa

Had the brainwave to google 10 minute yoga.  Sacked off Adrienne and found Vanessa. The bad knee, from my jogging phase last January, refused to let me kneel so the child prayer didn’t work.  After 8 more minutes of stretches, that changed and the knee worked again. Knelt in gratefulness.  I am hooked and full of morning joy.

Sunrise over the River Exe

Captured the morning joy on my phone for safe keeping and went back to the kitchen to consider getting the old floor tiles up ready for the new floor that will shine on one day.  The 40 year old glue is strong and true.  Weavils and silverfish can get under there but I can’t. 

Day 7

Shoulders aching from all the yoga and fighting the floor tiles.  There are 166 tiles and it might be six weeks before we get a new kitchen floor in.  That is 3 tiles a day.  Get one tile up. Decide to look at wall tiles instead.

Dirty Tiles

They are are not perfect either. Time to look at the whole picture.

Dirty Old Kitchen

At least the tape that holds the dishwasher together is tidy but this is not the look I aspire to.

This is. How do things like this happen to kitchens?

Stepped away and did 10 minutes with Vanessa again. It has been a good week of solid yoga. My mind is full of clarity, yet kitchens at the same time.

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